T. M. Kuta (they/xe) is a child of fandom who has been writing since they were six years old. At some point, they graduated from composition books to keyboards and never looked back! T.M. writes contemporary lesbian and Sapphic romances, and queer speculative fiction.
Best described as 4.5 excited ferrets in a tacky Hawaiian shirt, they live in a historic house on the East Coast of the United States with their three cats, The Tora Bean, Casper the Great and Powerful, and Channing Channing of the Catonsville Channings. When not writing, they can be found reading, cycling, and procrastinating as @tmkutawrites wherever fine social medias are sold.
Note: T. M. Kuta's works can be, and often are, 18+. Please interact with discretion.
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I just pulled up a declension chart to make sure that in translation my verb referred to my noun correctly. I hope my high school Latin teacher is proud.
#the woman didn't teach me a damn thing but ae is plural and nd means gerund#do i remember what a gerund is? no. but that's not relevant#i somehow passed that IB exam with a 4 and that is the greatest coup I have ever pulled off#thank u the universe for catallus 4
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Sometimes it really is just about writing the scenes... and then shuffling them around... then rewriting... then shuffling them BACK again and rewriting again... then finishing the chapter only to realize...
The first chapter of the new section needed to be in the book about 2 sections ago.
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Expanding a thought from a conversation this morning:
In general, I think "Is X out-of-character?" is not a terribly useful question for a writer. It shuts down possibility, and interesting directions you could take a character.
A better question, I believe, is "What would it take for Character to do X?" What extremity would she find herself in, where X starts to look like a good idea? What loyalties or fears leave him with X as his only option? THAT'S where a potentially interesting story lies.
In practice, I find that you can often justify much more from a character than you initially dreamed you could: some of my best stories come from "What might drive Character to do [thing he would never do]?" As long as you make it clear to the reader what the hell pushed your character to this point, you've got the seed of a compelling story on your hands.
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Eeee!!!
A COMMON BOND by T. M. KUTA
Construction Project Manager Carneline has a lot of her plate at the family business. The last thing she needs is romance.
But Josie, the skilled superintendent, is complicating things one iced coffee at a time.
✅️ Contemporary Lesbian Romance (Author Debut!)
✅️ Small Town Romance (in the queerest small town ever)
✅️ Salvadoran MC/POV character
✅️ Butch/Femme
✅️ Colleagues To Lovers
✅️ One Night Stand
✅️ Cringe-y Yet Loveable Sidekick
✅️ 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️/🍋🍋🍋🍋 (spicy!)
Well y'all after many fits and starts and life chaos later, my debut lesbian romance novella A COMMON BOND is finally here! We battled 3 family deaths, covered two separate maternity leaves at work, and rewrote this puppy twice, but it is HERE!
A Common Bond is my love letter to my day job in historic reconstruction and all of it's quirks, cliques, and capricious capers. Also... y'know, being a giant raging queer in construction. ;) It is an honor to publish a Clover Hill Romance book, and I hope you fall in love with Josie, Carneline, and Clover Hill the way I did while writing them!
Edit 10/30: Read the entire first chapter for free HERE!
PRE-ORDER NOW!
Dropping November 7, 2023!
Note: While A Common Bond is Book 13 in the Clover Hill Romance, all of the novellas stand alone. They share the same setting, a.k.a Clover Hill - Population: Queer, but are otherwise able to be read alone! If you like my novella, please consider buying one (or all) of the other 12 :)
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A Primer on Basic Construction Lingo
I get it—there’s a lot of construction lingo in A Common Bond. I couldn’t help myself! When you work in the industry, it’s so hard not to. My beta readers and editors helped me get the worst of it down to a dull roar, but I thought I would create a little write up sharing what some of the basic construction lingo means!
Ready? Here we go!
General Contractor:
Colloquially known as: The GC
Also known as cat herders. General contractors are in charge of running the project—they liaise with the client and the architects, iron out any problems, and (try to) keep the project on schedule.
Subcontractor:
Colloquially known as: The sub or subs
Subcontractors work for the general contractors. They are the specialty workers who do the work. Demo crews, Electricians, HVAC, Plumbers, Masonry, Roofing, Flooring, and more are all usually their own companies.
Sometimes you get a subcontractor who does multiple things—waterproofing and roofing, or masonry and concrete, etc.
Bid:
This one people might already be familiar with. This is when the subcontractor crunches the numbers and says “Doing ABC tasks on this project will cost us XYZ dollars.” Those final numbers will be given to the General Contractor, who will combine the numbers from all their subcontractors plus their own, and give it to the client. The client will decide which General Contractor’s bid they like the best, and whoever is chosen wins the bid.
Contract Documents:
Colloquially known as: CD’s
Contract Documents are usually made up of 3 parts: The Contract Drawings/Architectural Drawings, The Specifications, and The Contract. They are used by the GC and the Subcontractor to create their bid documents, which then later turn into the legally binding contracts that say “you must do XYZ work.”
Sometimes this can be “fun” because a project will release incomplete drawings to be bid on (these are known as 30% or 60%’s). This usually ends in a lot of back-and-forth on “Do we owe, don’t we owe” later on in the project, as items and tasks are removed and added to later iterations of the drawings.
Specifications:
Colloquially known as: The specs
Specifications tell general contractors and subcontractors how to Do The Thing. They are broken out by category –Demo, Masonry, Flashing and Sheet Metal, Unit Masonry, Historic Restoration, etc—and in each section the architect or client (usually the architect) will lay out what tasks are required before work can begin (Section 1), what materials should be used to do the work (Section 2), and how to do it (Section 3).
Section 2 is usually what matters most. Sometimes specifications are very specific and list only a single brand name material that can be used. You use that brand name material on pain of death. Other specifications are more open—you are told you can use this brand name material or a comparable brand name material made by a different company. Others still are even more open—they say to use any product that has ABC characteristics/properties which is made to XYZ things. The product to actually use is up to the company, as long as it fits within those requirements.
Submittals:
Submittals are basically where you take all the shit listed in the specifications and turn it in to the client and architect, asking for permission to use. This includes all product data and safety data for any materials that are to be used, preconstruction surveys, material samples, mock-ups, and more!
Mock Ups:
Mock ups are when you do a small sample of the bigger task you are contracted to do. If you are installing waterproofing, you put down 5ft by 5ft square of the entire process to show that you understand how the material and process work. If you are cleaning a building with a certain chemical, you clean a similarly sized area of building to make sure the chemicals work and don’t damage the building. Repeat across the entire jobsite for every trade and every material/process.
Request for Information (RFI):
It’s basically what is says on the tin: you are asking for more information. Usually it is about conflicting drawings, specifications, or unforeseen project conditions—aka, you demo the first layer of drywall and find a bunch of mold nobody knew anything about, or during preconstruction documentation by a subcontractor, a giant (or small) structural crack is discovered that didn’t make it into the contract drawings. RFIs are used to close information gaps, fix incongruent drawings, and generally capture specific decisions for construction of the building that aren’t already written down in the drawings, specification, or contract.
RFI’s are fun because they can often result in change orders.
Change Order:
Change Orders are changes, modifications, or adds to a contract. A wall is opened up and it turns out the brick is crumbling and in super bad shape—if that wasn’t in a subcontractor’s contract, the GC will ask them to submit how much the materials, labor, and overhead it will cost to do that task. That document, the change, is then submitted to the architect and the client for review. If it is approved, the change is good to go and the subcontractor can get to work.
Changes can also be given out when work is just…missed. For instance, you need to repair a bunch of painted stone window sills, but someone forgot that the paint has to be removed before those repairs can be done. Nobody has paint removal at the window sills in their contract. Whoops! The GC will ask the best sub for the task to submit a change order to do this work so that the original work can also be done.
--
And those are you basic terms! Please note that some of these are more complicated than I have explained, but I tried to boil them down to their most basic for those not in the industry.
I will make another post later with specific terms for masonry and restoration—since Oceanic is primarily a masonry restoration contractor, after all ;)
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I somehow have 23 pre-orders!
Or, as my friend to whom this novella is dedicated to said, "You made 48 whole dollars!" Indeed, I did. That's 23 more pre-orders/48 whole dollars than I thought I would have :)
Thank you to all the people who pre-ordered A Common Bond!! This debut indie author really appreciates it!
A COMMON BOND IS OUT TODAY!!!
A COMMON BOND by T. M. KUTA
Construction Project Manager Carneline has a lot of her plate at the family business. The last thing she needs is romance.
But Josie, the skilled superintendent, is complicating things one iced coffee at a time.
✅️ Contemporary Lesbian Romance (Author Debut!)
✅️ Small Town Romance (in the queerest small town ever)
✅️ Salvadoran MC/POV character
✅️ Butch/Femme
✅️ Colleagues To Lovers
✅️ One Night Stand
✅️ Cringe-y Yet Loveable Sidekick
✅️ 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️/🍋🍋🍋🍋 (spicy!)
Well y'all after many fits and starts and life chaos later, my debut lesbian romance novella A COMMON BOND is finally here! We battled 3 family deaths, covered two separate maternity leaves at work, and rewrote this puppy twice, but it is HERE!
A Common Bond is my love letter to my day job in historic reconstruction and all of it's quirks, cliques, and capricious capers. Also... y'know, being a giant raging queer in construction. ;) It is an honor to publish a Clover Hill Romance book, and I hope you fall in love with Josie, Carneline, and Clover Hill the way I did while writing them!
Edit 10/30: Read the entire first chapter for free HERE!
PRE-ORDER NOW!
Dropping November 7, 2023!
Note: While A Common Bond is Book 13 in the Clover Hill Romance, all of the novellas stand alone. They share the same setting, a.k.a Clover Hill - Population: Queer, but are otherwise able to be read alone! If you like my novella, please consider buying one (or all) of the other 12 :)
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when the story is just not working, but you keep writing anyway
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This is mainly for my followers & readers but I'm also interested in what others have to say! Helps me know what projects to focus on next.
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I make a silly little post and end up gaining more followers than all of my marketing campaigns thus far combined... I love Tumblr.
Welcome, everyone!
They're on to us, @thebibliosphere.
(Sent to me by one of my delightful Alpha readers.)
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OUT TOMORROW!!!
Construction Project Manager Carneline has a lot of her plate at the family business. The last thing she needs is romance. But Josie, the skilled superintendent, is complicating things one iced coffee at a time.
If you know, you know. 😈
A COMMON BOND by T. M. KUTA
A 🌶️🌶️🌶️ Colleagues-To-Lovers lesbian romance novella set in the queerest small town ever.
Out November 7, 2023!
FREE SAMPLE: HERE!
PRE-ORDER NOW!
[ID: A marketing image for T.M. Kuta's lesbian romance novella, A Common Bond. It is peach. On the right is a copy of the novella cover, with a white woman with curly red hair holding a to-go coffee container with the text A COMMON BOND by T.M.Kuta and A Clover Hill Romance in white with a blue outline. The marketing text says DEBUT LESFIC NOVELLA and "Y’know, where I come from “wearing a harness” meaning something completely different. 😈 OSHA Regulation 1910.140 - Personal Fall Protection System"]
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Cheers, I didn't know that! Thank you :) Will use plain text going forward.
Construction Project Manager Carneline has a lot of her plate at the family business. The last thing she needs is romance. But Josie, the skilled superintendent, is complicating things one iced coffee at a time.
If you know, you know. 😈
A COMMON BOND by T. M. KUTA
A 🌶️🌶️🌶️ Colleagues-To-Lovers lesbian romance novella set in the queerest small town ever.
Out November 7, 2023!
FREE SAMPLE: HERE!
PRE-ORDER NOW!
[ID: A marketing image for T.M. Kuta's lesbian romance novella, A Common Bond. It is peach. On the right is a copy of the novella cover, with a white woman with curly red hair holding a to-go coffee container with the text A COMMON BOND by T.M.Kuta and A Clover Hill Romance in white with a blue outline. The marketing text says DEBUT LESFIC NOVELLA and "Y’know, where I come from “wearing a harness” meaning something completely different. 😈 OSHA Regulation 1910.140 - Personal Fall Protection System"]
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As we all can see, NaNoWriMo is going, uh, great
But it's only day 5 and now that I am officially unemployed I don't have to work tomorrow! So let's see what we can crank out tonight, shall we?
*cracks knuckles*
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They're on to us, @thebibliosphere.
(Sent to me by one of my delightful Alpha readers.)
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Construction Project Manager Carneline has a lot of her plate at the family business. The last thing she needs is romance. But Josie, the skilled superintendent, is complicating things one iced coffee at a time.
If you know, you know. 😈
A COMMON BOND by T. M. KUTA
A 🌶️🌶️🌶️ Colleagues-To-Lovers lesbian romance novella set in the queerest small town ever.
Out November 7, 2023!
FREE SAMPLE: HERE!
PRE-ORDER NOW!
[ID: A marketing image for T.M. Kuta's lesbian romance novella, A Common Bond. It is peach. On the right is a copy of the novella cover, with a white woman with curly red hair holding a to-go coffee container with the text A COMMON BOND by T.M.Kuta and A Clover Hill Romance in white with a blue outline. The marketing text says DEBUT LESFIC NOVELLA and "Y’know, where I come from “wearing a harness” meaning something completely different. 😈 OSHA Regulation 1910.140 - Personal Fall Protection System"]
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It has been fixed, and there was much rejoicing!
Of course I would notice a mistake in my linktree right after @thebibliosphere set the hoards (affectionate) upon my website! And then I went to the linktree website and discovered it is apparently down!
Lovely! So until I can fix that:
PREORDER A COMMON BOND HERE!
Thank you everyone who thinks my little book might be interesting and I hope you like it if you do read it!
---
Edit: If linktree is down on the user end, and you are looking for me on other social medias, I am currently active as @ tmkutawrites:
Instagram
Bluesky
TikTok
I am going to be attempting to figure out Mastodon and a cross-platform poster in the next month. If you think there is a social media I should be on that I am not, please let me know!
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A COMMON BOND by T. M. KUTA
Construction Project Manager Carneline has a lot of her plate at the family business. The last thing she needs is romance.
But Josie, the skilled superintendent, is complicating things one iced coffee at a time.
✅️ Contemporary Lesbian Romance (Author Debut!)
✅️ Small Town Romance (in the queerest small town ever)
✅️ Salvadoran MC/POV character
✅️ Butch/Femme
✅️ Colleagues To Lovers
✅️ One Night Stand
✅️ Cringe-y Yet Loveable Sidekick
✅️ 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️/🍋🍋🍋🍋 (spicy!)
Well y'all after many fits and starts and life chaos later, my debut lesbian romance novella A COMMON BOND is finally here! We battled 3 family deaths, covered two separate maternity leaves at work, and rewrote this puppy twice, but it is HERE!
A Common Bond is my love letter to my day job in historic reconstruction and all of it's quirks, cliques, and capricious capers. Also... y'know, being a giant raging queer in construction. ;) It is an honor to publish a Clover Hill Romance book, and I hope you fall in love with Josie, Carneline, and Clover Hill the way I did while writing them!
Edit 10/30: Read the entire first chapter for free HERE!
PRE-ORDER NOW!
Dropping November 7, 2023!
Note: While A Common Bond is Book 13 in the Clover Hill Romance, all of the novellas stand alone. They share the same setting, a.k.a Clover Hill - Population: Queer, but are otherwise able to be read alone! If you like my novella, please consider buying one (or all) of the other 12 :)
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