Happy Pride Month everyone! Twinsie Tenise here. I would like to take a moment to thank everyone who took the time to answer the questions for our pride month celebration. I thought hard about the questions and had fun coming up with them. I love that the authors seemed to have as much fun answering them. We will be celebrating all month with author spotlights as well as reviews for some of the LGBTQIA books we’ve read this year. Check back daily to learn more about that days featured author or book and add to your TBR piles. I hope you enjoy getting to know a little about all of these wonderful authors and their work.
🏳🌈 Tell us your name and a little about yourself? I’m Audrey. You can call me Aud. I write epic romantic fantasy and under the pen name Andrea Marie Johnson I write dark why choose romantasy. And of course, all of it is queer. I’m an artist. I dabble in all sorts of things including wire jewelry, photography, and bronze sculpture but my favorites are character illustrations and fantasy maps. When I’m not writing or drawing, I’m probably playing video games (I have a BFA in animation and game design!) or watching anime (current favorites are: Spy x Family, Apothecary Diaries, and My Hero Academia). If you spend any time with me at all you will learn that I have a deep love of frogs.
🏳🌈 How many books have you written? Do you have a favorite?
I have four books out currently. 3 under Audrey and 1 under Andi Marie and hopefully by the time WotR happens, I’ll have a Red Society short story published in an anthology. My favorite is definitely Shadows Dark and Deadly. When I wrote Child of the Moon I was still deep in denial about my sexuality and gender and SDaD is when I really started to embrace and accept it. It’s unapologetically bi and writing Damara’s enby egg starting to crack helped me crack my own.
🏳🌈 Do you write one book and finish it completely before starting the next? If not, how do you keep yourself from confusing the projects?
My process is chaos. Sometimes I’ll start a WIP and finish draft 1 in under 2 months while only working on it (ok that was just SDaD but still), and sometimes I will take years to write draft 1 while also working on other WIPs. I think I’m pretty good at compartmentalizing all my 30+ WIPs. It also helps that when I switch things up, I start from the beginning because it’s been too long and I need a refresher on the story. By the time I catch back up, I’ve got a good idea of the voice/story/etc.
🏳🌈 What font do you write in? Do you actually care or is it a default setting?
I have written in Arial for at least 15 years now. Idk what it is about that font but it just feels good to write in.
🏳🌈How do you ensure your LGBTQ characters feel authentic and mutifaceted, rather than just serve a plot function?
I try not to write MCs outside of my own queer identity. All my MCs are bi (yes, even Neoma, she just doesn’t know it yet), I’ve got nonbinary MCs in the works and even a few that are demi. For LIs and important side characters, I try to avoid stereotypes, write them as people and use sensitivity readers
🏳🌈 Do you have a favorite piece of LGBTQ history or fun fact you would like to share?
Polari is a whole slang language that was used by queer men in the UK in the 1900s because of the strict laws against homosexuality. It fell out of popularity after the UK legalized homosexuality in 1967.
🏳🌈 What is one of your favorite books or movies with LGBTQ representation? Feel free to share more than one, I know it is difficult as a reader to pick one favorite of anything. Especially if its book related.
This feels sort of like cheating since it just recently came out and everyone is talking about it (at the time of writing this in February) but Heated Rivalry. There’s just something really refreshing about a romance TV show about queer love where I don’t have to worry about it being tragic. I was also 18 in 08 which basically makes the characters the same age as me (if it took place in 2026) so I relate as a millennial but also as a deeply closeted high school jock (swimmer).
🏳🌈 What is something you have used for a bookmark that IS NOT a bookmark?
Fruit snacks wrapper
🏳🌈 Do you listen to music while you write? If so, what are some of your favorite genres or songs?
I alternate between listening to music and forgetting music even exists. This past year I’ve listened almost exclusively to Sleep Token with the occasional Evanescence because I didn’t realize they’d made any music since like 2008.
🏳🌈 What is a super specific detail you know about one of your characters that has no relevance to the story?
