Carling Mars
Sensitivity & Expert Consultants"An aficionado of all things spooky and dark, Carling's an expert at finding exactly what your story needs."
Carling (they/them) likes writing dark, spooky, bloody fiction. They are looking forward to reading all YA, personal narratives, literary fiction, anything with magic, dystopian worlds, and academic work. They’re a sucker for queer romance.
They’re ironically pretty easily creeped out, so they’re a good judge of whether your horror novel will keep people up at night. They’re ready for blood and guts and will do their best with sex scenes.
The book they were most affected by in 2019 was On Writing by Stephen King (though he could definitely benefit from a sensitivity reader!).
Sensitivity / Expert
- Mental illness: anxiety, OCD, CPTSD, bipolar, schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, suicidality, hallucinations, delusions, ADHD (diagnosed as an adult), hypersexuality, mania, manic spending, paranoia, agoraphobia
- Therapy/psychiatry (patient), psychiatric hospitalization
- LGBTQ: queer, gay, genderqueer, gender non-conformity, non-binary femme, grey-A sexuality, gender questioning, questioning sexuality
- Abusive romantic relationships: sexual, emotional
- Disability (temporary physical, chronic mental, temporary GI), disability rights
- Caretaker/patient romantic relationships
- Invisible illness/chronic illness/mystery illness; medical/diagnostic trauma
- Physical therapy; immobilizing injuries (legs, back)
- Pilates
- Women's college
- Being nonreligious in a majority-LDS city/state
- Vegetarian/vegan lifestyle; food allergies, including use of EpiPen
- Working in law firms, law school
- Majoring in science, working in science labs including animal labs
- Memory problems
- Locations: Salt Lake City, Denver/Boulder area, New York City (Manhattan, Brooklyn), Finland (small town)
Preferred Genres
Horror Romcom video games YA romance magical realism experimental
Avoided Genres
None!