Scribbles and Bits

Duck Prints Press’s monthly “created works round-ups” are our opportunity to spotlight some of the amazing work that people working with us have done that ISN’T linked to their work with Duck Prints Press. We include fanworks, outside publications, and anything else that creators feel like sharing with y’all. Inclusion is voluntary and includes anything that they decided “hey, I want to put this on the created work’s round-up!”

Visit our Created Works Round-Up Master Post to see all the works our creators have shared since September, 2022!

And check out what they’ve shared with us this month…

Baby Trapped by Evangeline Giaconia

fiction || original work || platonic or familial || general audiences || no major warnings apply || 3,300 || complete

summary: My story “Baby Trapped” appeared in Home Constellations: A Speculative Anthology of Unconventional Bonds, an anthology featuring scifi stories of queer family and kinship. My story is a comedic piece about escaped assassin-bot and a genetically engineered hypercat who find a baby on their doorstep.

other tags: found family

LINK

Sometimes The Cure is a Fresh Squeeze by Robin Mal

fiction || all elite wrestling || f/m, poly (multiple genders) || orange cassidy/toni storm; toni storm/mina shirakawa || explicit || no major warnings apply || 1,839 || complete

summary: “Partnered sex, with penetration, is the only way to work the drug out of your system. Otherwise, you can masturbate until your fingers are raw and it won’t do you any good.”

When Orange Cassidy is injected with an aphrodisiac, he turns to Toni and Mina for help.

other tags: Kayfabe Compliant; Sex Pollen; Enthusiastic Consent; Open Relationships; Friends to Lovers; Threesome – F/F/M; Implied Past Rape/Non-Con; Post-AEW World’s End 2025

AO3

The Peace We Find Together by Shadaras

fiction || original work || platonic or familial || teen & up || no major warnings apply || 1,741 || complete

summary: Everyone talks about the dramatic part of monster-hunting: The fights, the scars, the reagents harvested from the beasts. People rarely talk about the come-down after the beast is slain. How it comes in motels and hidden camps and other places where you learn to make do as you remember how to breathe and act like a normal person and not something half a monster yourself.

Opal and Jasper have been hunting together for over a decade now, though, they’ve got practice. And, today, a motel to sleep in, which is always a gift.

Most importantly: They have each other.

other tags: POV First Person, Urban Fantasy, Monster Hunters, Hurt/Comfort, Platonic Intimacy, Literal Sleeping Together, Wing Grooming,

AO3

Juniper by Shadaras

fiction || original work || f/f || teen & up || creator choses not to use warnings || 2,259 || complete

summary: You arrive in Alaska on the longest day of the year, the sunlight stretching endless above the taiga, more wilderness than you’ve ever seen before in your life visible to your bleary eyes as you land in Fairbanks.

or: Moving to Alaska for your mom’s job has unexpected consequences.

other tags: Magical Realism, Horror, POV Second Person, Geographical Isolation, Forests

AO3

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Welcome to My Garden by Megan Renee Doyle

illustrated zine || original work || no ships || general audiences || no major warnings apply || 331 || complete

summary: Full-color zine about a whimsical tour of a cemetery garden and the little beings that dwell there

LINK

Feel Something by ShannonXL

fiction || the vampire diaries || f/f, poly (multiple genders) || elena gilbert/rebekah mikaelson/damon salvatore elena gilbert/rebekah mikaelson || explicit || creator choses not to use warnings || 4,830 || complete

summary: After Damon lies about his reasons for bringing Elena to New York, Rebekah shows up and decides to teach him a lesson. Physical wounds heal too quickly, but the psychological damage of seeing your girlfriend getting her world rocked? That ought to hurt for a couple of lifetimes.

other tags: Cuckolding, Cunnilingus, Nipple Play, Slapping, Vaginal Fingering, Oral Sex, Extremely Dubious Consent, No Humanity Elena Gilbert, Vampire Elena Gilbert, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Mind Compulsion (Vampire Diaries), Femdom, Dom/sub Undertones, Control, Pinching, Begging, Not Safe Sane and Consensual, Exhibitionism

AO3

Ghostbusters?? by ShannonXL

video || original work || no ships || mature || no major warnings apply || 00:01:36 || complete

summary: Hypothetical: what if you’re lost and also horny for ghosts?

YOUTUBE

Happy We Need Diverse Books Day! We had a chat with our rec list contributors about which books we’ve read that helped us – books with diverse representation that helped us better understand ourselves in ways we wouldn’t have if these books didn’t exist, if they’d been banned, if they hadn’t found their ways into our hands. Note that we openly acknowledge that a few of these may be “problematic” or not current (whereas others are definitely very progressive!) – some of these are books we read a long time ago, and what we needed then wouldn’t be the same as what someone would need now, and that’s okay!

Which books with representation helped you and how?

Nina Waters: Two spring to mind for me. Both of these are books I read in the mid 1990s when I was a teenager in high school.

Knight of Ghosts and Shadows by Mercedes Lackey and Ellen Guon. I didn’t particularly enjoy where this series went after book 1, but the first book introduced me to the concept I now know as “the only solution to a love triangle is poly.” I’d never really encountered polyamory before I read this book? It was delightfully refreshing for teen!me that the solution to “will he pick a relationship with the woman or the man?” wasn’t “of course he’ll pick the woman, because no stories get to be queer in the mid 1990s,” but was in fact, “¿por qué no los dos?” It was just so wonderful. They got be poly. Poly exists. I learned so much.

The Deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon. I had so much trouble finding books with Strong Female Characters who were actually, like, the kind of person I wanted to be. Paks meant so much to me. I started doing distance walking just to emulate her. I read this as a teenager; finding out in my 30s that a lot of people headcanon Paks as asexual was also like. Damn. Young!me knew, even when I didn’t know. I had no word for this beyond, “this is a character I really like and would like to emulate,” but the pieces were all there.

Linnea Peterson: May the Best Man Win by ZR Ellor was the first book I read with autism rep that reminded me of myself. It made me feel seen in a way no book ever had, in a way I didn’t know I could be seen.

Anonymous: Sure I’ll join the party (they say, about to introduce the most depressing take you’ve ever seen). Mine is Lord of the Rings because of Frodo’s PTSD. Back when I taught primary, (tw: suicide mention) I had one of my second graders try to kill himself in my classroom. I managed to stop him and held him for an hour waiting for help. I got major PTSD from that, and seeing Frodo succeed – I mean, he saved the world!!! – and still have to leave Middle Earth because the act of saving messed him up irrevocably, yeah. I relate.

JD Rivers: Luck in the Shadows by Lynn Flewelling – It wasn’t the first queer book I had read at point but it was the first fantasy book that included (pretty much on the sidelines) a queer relationship. It hit a nerve in me.

boneturtle: I don’t know how well it holds up but for me it would be Petey by Ben Mikaelson. It was an eye opening experience to see how society treats people who are disabled, and as a young kid who was often in situations outside my control and with no one to turn to, I found a lot to relate to with the main character. It has stuck with me over the decades because it was the first book where I felt a real sense of hope and the capacity to persevere even in a situation that couldn’t be “fixed” or willed away.

Tryan A Bex: I never identified with a character with my birth name, but the first time I read a book with a character with my chosen nonbinary name it was like “hey! It’s me!” (The book was Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender)

Also, when I was studying on white privilege, The Pretty One by Keah Brown helped me see what the intersection of ableism, racism, and misogyny can look like. It was eye opening and I believe helped me to become a better person in how I interact with other people. (It was also incredibly funny at times, highly recommend.)

Shadaras: Neon Yang’s The Black Tides of Heaven is focused on a character whose gender experiences I strongly related to, which is rare because there are so many variations of nonbinary. Akeha going “idk, I guess I’ll pick [gender] because my twin is picking [gender] and I want to pick a different one to differentiate myself?” as a young person and then growing up and going “okay but I don’t really identify with this gender” and learning about nonbinary identities and claiming one for themself was delightful.

Anonymous #2: They’re hardly high art, but as an ace kid in the ’80s – ’90s the character of Jughead in the Archie comic books was a revelation to me. It’s still hard to find ace rep even today, so that was the only time I’d ever seen a character be confronted by a romance plot and respond with “no thank you.” I’d had no idea that was an option.

Shannon: Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey was the first queer-normative book I read and the heroine is bi/pan and just. Never ashamed of that. Assertive about her desires in general. And that was a big deal for me in 2003. I was young and a Very Invested Ally and couldn’t really conceive of a world that was different for queer people.

Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden came to me around the same time and it was obviously a more grounded book but like. The idea of there being more than one girl that liked girls. In the same place. That was a big deal for me.

Tell us about the books you read that helped you better understand yourself!

April is Autism Acceptance Month, and today is World Autism Awareness Day, and as a Press full of neurodiverse people, we accept, are aware of, and embrace our beloved autistic characters! Join us for today’s rec list of nine books with autistic queer characters (or, in Hannah Gadsby’s case, actual people).

Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle

They’ll scare you straight to hell.

Welcome to Neverton, Montana: home to a God-fearing community with a heart of gold.

Nestled high up in the mountains is Camp Damascus, the self-proclaimed “most effective” gay conversion camp in the country. Here, a life free from sin awaits. But the secret behind that success is anything but holy.

Hell Followed with Us by Andrew Joseph White

Sixteen-year-old trans boy Benji is on the run from the cult that raised him—the fundamentalist sect that unleashed Armageddon and decimated the world’s population. Desperately, he searches for a place where the cult can’t get their hands on him, or more importantly, on the bioweapon they infected him with.

But when cornered by monsters born from the destruction, Benji is rescued by a group of teens from the local Acheson LGBTQ+ Center, affectionately known as the ALC. The ALC’s leader, Nick, is gorgeous, autistic, and a deadly shot, and he knows Benji’s darkest secret: the cult’s bioweapon is mutating him into a monster deadly enough to wipe humanity from the earth once and for all.

Still, Nick offers Benji shelter among his ragtag group of queer teens, as long as Benji can control the monster and use its power to defend the ALC. Eager to belong, Benji accepts Nick’s terms…until he discovers the ALC’s mysterious leader has a hidden agenda, and more than a few secrets of his own.

The Luis Ortega Survival Club by Sonido Reyes

Ariana Ruiz wants to be noticed. But as an autistic girl who never talks, she goes largely ignored by her peers, despite her bold fashion choices. So when cute, popular Luis starts to pay attention to her, Ari finally feels seen.

Luis’s attention soon turns to something more, and they have sex at a party—while Ari didn’t say no, she definitely didn’t say yes. Before she has a chance to process what happened and decide if she even has the right to be mad at Luis, the rumor mill begins churning—thanks, she’s sure, to Luis’s ex-girlfriend, Shawni. Boys at school now see Ari as an easy target, someone who won’t say no. 

Then Ari finds a mysterious note in her locker that eventually leads her to a group of students determined to expose Luis for the predator he is. To her surprise, she finds genuine friendship among the group, including her growing feelings for the very last girl she expected to fall for. But in order to take Luis down, she’ll have to come to terms with the truth of what he did to her that night—and risk everything to see justice done. 

May the Best Man Win by Z.R. Ellor

Jeremy Harkiss, cheer captain and student body president, won’t let coming out as a transgender boy ruin his senior year. Instead of bowing to the bigots and an outdated school administration, Jeremy decides to make some noise—and how better than by challenging his all-star ex-boyfriend Lukas for the title of Homecoming King?

Lukas Rivers, football star and head of the Homecoming Committee, is just trying to find order in his life after his older brother’s funeral and the loss of his long-term girlfriend—who turned out to be a boy. But when Jeremy threatens to break his heart and steal his crown, Lukas kickstarts a plot to sabotage Jeremy’s campaign.

When both boys take their rivalry too far, the dance is on the verge of being canceled. To save Homecoming, they’ll have to face the hurt they’re both hiding—and the lingering butterflies they can’t deny.

Ten Steps to Nanette: A Memoir Situation by Hannah Gadsby

Gadsby’s unique stand-up special Nanette was a viral success that left audiences captivated by her blistering honesty and her ability to create both tension and laughter in a single moment. But while her worldwide fame might have looked like an overnight sensation, her path from open mic to the global stage was hard-fought and anything but linear.

Ten Steps to Nanette traces Gadsby’s growth as a queer person from Tasmania—where homosexuality was illegal until 1997—to her ever-evolving relationship with comedy, to her struggle with late-in-life diagnoses of autism and ADHD, and finally to the backbone of Nanette: the renouncement of self-deprecation, the rejection of misogyny, and the moral significance of truth-telling.

Equal parts harrowing and hilarious, Ten Steps to Nanette continues Gadsby’s tradition of confounding expectations and norms, properly introducing us to one of the most explosive, formative voices of our time.

Skullrunner by Vyvre Argent

During the revolution, Commander Gavon slew the tyrannical god of memory and claimed his power. He then built the fair and democratic Golden Republic. But the Republic has terrible flaws, and anyone who fights for change might wake up one day with all memory of their identity stolen from them. Such a thing happened to pirate captain Cevette Zarcanzi. She plans to sail throughout the Seaward Isles, stealing memories trapped in physical form from the Republic’s secret archives, and burning them in hopes she might one day set her lost past free.

Evazina Gavon, the commander’s foster daughter, is an embodied fragment of the shattered soul of the goddess of death. Women like her, known as echoes, are feared and hated in the Golden Republic, and Commander Gavon has only kept her safe because the sacrifice of echoes is what fuels his memory magic. When she joins Cevette’s crew, Eva believes returning the memories to the citizens of the Golden Republic will lead them to speak out and peacefully remove her father from power. But, as Eva and Cevette sail to strange and remote islands, as their feelings for each other deepen, they discover that, to live freely, they must turn their ship around and fight.

Free from Falling by E.L. Massey

Justin “Matts” Matthews is good at a lot of things: Rubik’s Cubes, playing guitar, herding cattle, and most importantly for his career in the NHL, hockey. He’s not good at human interactions or social cues, especially when it comes to women. This deficiency is an annoyance rather than a problem, right up until he meets Sydney Warren. If it’s not love at first sight, it’s sure something close.

Sydney Warren, frontwoman for up-and-coming rock band Red Right Hand, is fierce, driven, and she doesn’t do relationships. Being an out trans woman in the music industry is more than enough pressure—a romantic entanglement would be added stress she doesn’t need. A romantic entanglement with a professional hockey player who, to all accounts, is only just learning to be an ally is definitely not what she needs. And yet.

After a chance encounter, Matts and Sydney become unlikely friends. However, in the stolen moments of their busy schedules––late-night phone calls between NHL games and concert tour dates—they start to question if maybe “friendship” isn’t so apt a description for whatever this is between them.

But can they overcome the outside pressures from family and media that would rather their relationship end before it has a chance to start?

Ellen Outside the Lines by A.J. Sass

Thirteen-year-old Ellen Katz feels most comfortable when her life is well planned out and people fit neatly into her predefined categories. She attends temple with Abba and Mom every Friday and Saturday. Ellen only gets crushes on girls, never boys, and she knows she can always rely on her best-and-only friend, Laurel, to help navigate social situations at their private Georgia middle school.

Laurel has always made Ellen feel like being autistic is no big deal. But lately, Laurel has started making more friends, and cancelling more weekend plans with Ellen than she keeps. A school trip to Barcelona seems like the perfect place for Ellen to get their friendship back on track.  Except it doesn’t.

Toss in a new nonbinary classmate whose identity has Ellen questioning her very binary way of seeing the world, homesickness, a scavenger hunt-style team project that takes the students through Barcelona to learn about Spanish culture and this trip is anything but what Ellen planned.

Making new friends and letting go of old ones is never easy, but Ellen might just find a comfortable new place for herself if she can learn to embrace the fact that life doesn’t always stick to a planned itinerary.

The Many Half-Lived Lives of Sam Sylvester by Maya MacGregor

Sam Sylvester’s not overly optimistic about their recent move to the small town of Astoria, Oregon after a traumatic experience in their last home in the rural Midwest.

Yet Sam’s life seems to be on the upswing after meeting several new friends and a potential love interest in Shep, the pretty neighbor. However, Sam can’t seem to let go of what might have been, and is drawn to investigate the death of a teenage boy in 1980s Astoria. Sam’s convinced he was murdered–especially since Sam’s investigation seems to resurrect some ghosts in the town.

Threatening notes and figures hidden in shadows begin to disrupt Sam’s life. Yet Sam continues to search for the truth. When Sam discovers that they may be closer to a killer than previously known, Sam has a difficult decision to make. Would they risk their new life for a half-lived one?

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