EDIT:

There is one house rule I forgot to mention; it is common in some locales that the Queen of Spades, like any penalty Heart, should not be played off-suit until Hearts have been broken (obviously it can and should be played to follow suit). Your group might be playing with this as an unwritten rule, so your sluffing the Queen early might be messing with their mojo as they feel you're playing a different game than they are.

However, this rule makes the Queen harder to lose, making the game more luck-based and scripted. If Hearts have to be broken to play it off-suit, then "hunting the bitch" is the natural next move for the two or three tricks after the initial Club trick, and your only defense is to be the longest in Spades. So, I don't use this rule, and neither do most computerized versions of the game. I do, however, count the Queen for the "no bleeding Hearts" rule, which states that a penalty card may not be played on the first trick unless the player only has penalty cards (which is an extremely rare situation).

Hearts is a game of doing low-down, nasty things. Your opponents need to grow a skin (or a pair) and learn to turn the tables on you by "hunting the bitch"; instead of trying to void Diamonds or Clubs early as they're apparently trying to do, they should be leading low Spade after low Spade to force you to "eat" that Queen by following suit with it.

If that becomes the group's formulaic play, the antidote to that is either to be long in Spades with the Queen and "lead" the hunt yourself to void everyone else in Spades, then lose the lead and play the Queen offsuit, or to not have the Queen at all, be long in Hearts and short (and low) in Spades, void Spades early and break Hearts to punish the hunters for beating up on a woman.

Your hand, and your group's strategy, determines your own:

• If you have the Ace of Clubs, you shouldn't also have the 2 if you had any chance to get rid of both. Play the Ace on the first trick and you control the hand from there; you can start a Diamond or Club-voiding binge or a Spade hunt.
• If you don't have the Ace of Clubs, play your highest one and hope the person immediately to your right doesn't have the Ace.
• The lead to the second trick usually determines the basic strategy of the hand unless someone has an unbalanced-enough hand to quickly say otherwise.
• Another Club typically results in someone voiding Clubs, so be wary of leading the third Club trick in the hand as you'll likely pay for it.
• Diamonds are safer as the first hand didn't have them, so statistically speaking that tends to be another safe hand or two.
• Once a Spade is led it usually starts the hunt, and until at least three Spade tricks are played or Hearts are broken, attempting to stop it by winning one safely and leading low in Clubs or Diamonds will either get you flagged as the Queen-holder, or whomever does hold the Queen will have tried to void one of those suits and the odds of it being foisted off-suit are high.
• Once Hearts are broken, the next trick is usually "revenge"; whomever won the first Heart will lead the lowest Heart they have, both to lose the trick and the lead, and make sure someone else gets 4 points (unless someone is void in Hearts).
• From there, it all depends on who has the lead, whether that person's paid attention to what's been thrown, and what they might be able to do to lose the lead. Usually, someone ends up a little too long in one suit after the first few tricks, and if they win a trick it's pretty much over unless they managed to keep a few low cards in a second suit that hasn't been exhausted yet.

Hearts is a game of doing low-down, nasty things. Your opponents need to grow a skin (or a pair) and learn to turn the tables on you by "hunting the bitch"; instead of trying to void Diamonds or Clubs early as they're apparently trying to do, they should be leading low Spade after low Spade to force you to "eat" that Queen by following suit with it.

If that becomes the group's formulaic play, the antidote to that is either to be long in Spades with the Queen and "lead" the hunt yourself to void everyone else in Spades, then lose the lead and play the Queen offsuit, or to not have the Queen at all, be long in Hearts and short (and low) in Spades, void Spades early and break Hearts during the hunt to punish the hunters for beating up on a woman.

Your hand, and your group's strategy, determines your own:

• If you have the Ace of Clubs, you shouldn't also have the 2 if you had any chance to get rid of both. Play the Ace on the first trick and you control the hand from there; you can start a Diamond or Club-voiding binge or a Spade hunt.
• If you don't have the Ace of Clubs, play your highest one and hope the person immediately to your right doesn't have the Ace.
• The lead to the second trick usually determines the basic strategy of the hand unless someone has an unbalanced-enough hand to quickly say otherwise.
• Another Club typically results in someone voiding Clubs, so be wary of leading the third Club trick in the hand as you'll likely pay for it.
• Diamonds are safer as the first hand didn't have them, so statistically speaking that tends to be another safe hand or two.
• Once a Spade is led it usually starts the hunt, and until at least three Spade tricks are played or Hearts are broken, attempting to stop it by winning one safely and leading low in Clubs or Diamonds will either get you flagged as the Queen-holder, or whomever does hold the Queen will have tried to void Clubs or Diamonds, and the odds of the QS being foisted off-suit become very high.
• Once Hearts are broken, the next trick is usually "revenge"; whomever won the first Heart will lead the lowest Heart they have, both to lose the trick and the lead, and make sure someone else gets 4 points (unless someone is void in Hearts).
• From there, it all depends on who has the lead, whether that person's paid attention to what's been thrown, and what they might be able to do to lose the lead. Usually, someone ends up a little too long in one suit after the first few tricks, and if they win a trick it's pretty much over unless they managed to keep a few low cards in a second suit that hasn't been exhausted yet.