Quill and Flame Gets Flamed
It might be a little on-the-nose to have a logo of a flame with a feather quill in the middle of it when you’re a Christian publishing house advocating against writing certain types of fiction, but in this day and age we can’t expect subtlety. Under the Trump Regime, anything goes when it comes to openly expressing disdain toward aspects of modern society that the regressive Christo-fascists believe to be immoral and so we get corny shit like Quill & Flame Publishers, a poorly veiled Christian publishing house who’ve literally made their logo the outward face of their “hidden” ethos.
Q&F think they’re being cute when they say things like “Books that bring light.” on the front of their webpage but as soon as you click on the “Read More” under their “About” section, they make it clear what they really think:
“At Quill & Flame, we believe that words have power. The right words can bring life, while the wrong words can manifest darkness. When we read, we are putting those potentially life-changing words inside us. There they sit, lurking in the background, altering our subconsciousness. As such, it behooves us to put in the right words into our minds.”
It’s hard not to raise the ol’ eyebrows at the words “manifest darkness” in the context of just reading books but here we are in the year of our Lord 2025 pretending that reading the wrong book is going to immediately make us into the primeval promiscuous horde whereas reading the “right” (see: moral) fiction is going to “bring life,” whatever that’s supposed to mean (make us straight and having babies?). Even worse, the only reason we’re all now aware of their existence is because of their Instagram post utilizing the hashtag “sickofthesmut” which tried to highlight what they consider to be the over-abundance of sex in today’s romance novels. Frankly, I think plenty of women have been absolutely reveling in a genre that’s finally catering to their sexual liberation and that’s good.
Several Bluesky (BSky) users expressed incredulousness at the audacity of the “traditional” publishing house and their Insta hashtag. BSky user psauthor stated about the tag: “Mean girl/pick me energy. It’s never-ending.” while BSky user daxaeterna.daxmurray.com stated: “Scratch the surface just a little on their website and you will discover that they are a Christian publishing house. They don't have a preference for closed-door Romance, they have an agenda. The shaming they are doing of people who read/write open door romance is intentional. They know what they are doing. Trying to explain to them what they are doing is harmful isn't gonna achieve anything because, in their eyes, they are Good and battling Sin.”. Dax goes on to explain this common tactic, one that was used more ham-fistedly by “Protect Clean Fiction” led by a 16 year old Christian author whose book just honestly sucked (sorry Abigail). It’s one that denigrates open door romance in order to utilize shame in order to proselytize and advertise their own wares—the same thing Jack Chick did by disseminating his creepy little racist tracts. It’s just a tract in Instagram form. Most BSky users and romance genre-lovers consider Q&F’s stance against smut to be against women…but is that true?
Quill & Flame isn’t against women, in my humble opinion. Their organization, though headed up by a former English teacher who definitely looks like she’s spent far too much time on her knees (and not in the fun way), is comprised of a decent spread of obvious ideological points of view and nothing here is fundamental in nature. They’re definitely into a little swearing and a lot of kissing but this leaves us in a state of uncertainty as their guidelines are somewhat murky and they’re very clearly anti-smut in an age where pornography is actively catching strays from individual senators (ahem, Oklahoma) and their books could, theoretically, end up categorized as porn if there are themes considered “suspect” by the evangelicals of today. Though they might not consider their content as “pornographic” that doesn’t stop anyone else from drawing lines wherever they damn well please and including books published by Q&F that have maybe a little too much kiss or, dare I suggest it, LGBTQA+ themes.
Speaking of—
Nowhere in Q&F’s guidelines do they discuss whether or not they allow for queer themes or characters. Theoretically, as long as the characters remain relatively sexless, they shouldn’t be a problem, but it would be an interesting experiment to make the attempt to write a book and publish it through them with a queer kissing scene and a queer happily-ever-after. After a careful scan of every page of their website, searching for terms relating to LGBTQA+, we’ve come up with nothing. As a veiled Christian publishing house, it should be a nice little surprise if they email us back to tell us that “yes” they would print a non-spicy LGBTQA+ novel. I mean, because really why not? If there’s no smut in the book, it should be fair game, right?
Still, circling back around, it is fairly gauche to be branding your publishing house with the image of fire in relation to books when it’s fairly clear these days that Republicans are going to ease their way into the censorship game after they’re done gutting Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and just about anything else that they think might help poor people. Thinking that the leopards aren’t going to eat your face and come after your “PG-13” kissing books as porn is just wishful thinking and the kind of wishful thinking that‘s quite common among women who think they’re advocating for a more godly feminine community (hence why I think they’re not anti-woman but they are stupid).