OKAY LET'S FUCKIN GO
I come bearing gifts! Four new free books for newsletter subscribers--including one 99K CHONKER of a fluffy Mal/Seong-Jae AU plus three 10-18K short stories/novellas.
Links and descriptions below!
raise your hand if your sexuality and gender identity are super-complex but you just say "gay" half the time so people won't ask you really insensitive, weird questions you don't have the emotional energy to answer
Quiet reminder that if you're a marginalized creator, you don't have to feel pressured to build works of political significance.
It's okay to create things where people like you/us have fun, have adventures.
It's okay to make things just because they're pretty and magical.
Friend: I want to see Ron Perlman in a romance.
Me: Do...do you not...know about the 1987 Beauty and the Beast series...? It's the reason half my generation are closet furries.
Friend: No...? What is that?
Me: OH MY GOD
Hey. You.
Eyes on your own page.
That thing you're working on? Is amazing. You don't need to compare it to what anyone else is doing.
You're being unfair to yourself. Remember that no one else can do what you do, the way that you do it.
And that's pretty awesome.
So since I only recently joined
@Patreon
like a day before the fee change fiasco, they just sent me one of those automated emails about writing a good intro.
A section in their "don't ever" tips made me go "Uhhhm...?" and, to me, reveals a lot of how they think about patrons?
...y'all. My mother, whom I don't speak to voluntarily, has apparently been reading my books, and she emailed me to formally complain about how "unnecessarily homosexual" they are.
That's it. That's my brand for life. Unnecessarily Homosexual™. Done.
Small tip for hand-washing re:
#COVID_19
:
MOISTURIZE.
Repeated hand-washing leads to dry, cracked skin. Cracks in the skin = another point of entry for viruses, bacteria, foreign substances. Lotion up after washing your hands.
*disappears into internet blackout again*
Pausing my social media break for a half-second because I need to do this before I lose my nerve.
"On Sarah Lyons and Why I Ended My Relationship With Riptide Publishing"
(CW/TW for...I...honestly, fucking everything?)
So in the face of the cluster this last week has been, some good news--one of the secrets I've been keeping is out of the bag. ^_^
I've sold the first two books in an M/M series about the teachers at a New England boys' boarding school to
@CarinaPress
as part of the Adores line!
Let men be weak, soft, vulnerable. Let men cry. Let men be scared, anxious, uncertain.
Don't yell at us to man up. Don't deride those moments of vulnerability, be they frequent or infrequent.
Expecting men to be tough & emotionless is another facet of toxic masculinity.
Don't.
"Here's the pitch: these two grown-arse adults are deeply concerned their 19-year-old son isn't fucking, so they offer a 30-something woman a car to chase him around and molest him."
"Sure, that doesn't sound weird at all. Greenlight it, let's film, what's your budget, baby?"
People who have only known GPS do not know the horror of directions from relatives you haven't seen in years that boil down to "turn left at the McDonald's with the broken sign, if you get to the one with the lit sign you've gone too far" and it's day and the signs are off so wtf
I really wish more non-ace people understood that an ace-spec person can find a person's physical traits aesthetically pleasing and attractive without having a physical/sexual attraction/arousal response.
Appreciation without physical response does not negate someone's aceness.
If you, as an author, read something brilliant and think "I wish I'd written that," never feel weird, bad, or guilty over it.
It was authors we admired who inspired us to write.
And there's nothing wrong with still continuing to learn from and be inspired by authors we love.
Okay, one more thing is bugging me about the
@romancewriters
decision and
#IStandWithCourtney
before I shut up and go back on hiatus.
And it's that Suzan Tisdale is presenting herself as marginalized and speaking truth to power based on differentials in platform size.
No.
Like they're basically saying "don't let those patrons get too uppity, make them grateful for your presence."
It's marketing-speak manipulation that positions patrons as fannish commodities, with zero understanding of the sense of community that goes into patron support.
...y'all
Did I really just write, edit, and soon to publish a full-length 65,000-word M/M contemporary romance in the space of a week
*Just* to be a petty dick (cock, even, some might say) to some privileged little white girl throwing her weight around the romance community?
So...gonna try one more time to warn y'all about Christopher Bouzy and Spoutible. I'm probably wasting my breath, but...
He is grifting y'all. Taking your donations in bad faith for months while he does nothing to develop the site.
Proof?
@doubtible
at .
So sick of having to discuss trans issues nonstop.
But I can't shut up. *We* can't shut up.
Our lives depend on being loud, being visible, making the truth heard over the hate.
I just want to be a normal guy writing my messy books.
But I can't be that right now.
So I'm loud.
Here it is.
$0.99 until Monday only.
Or until that bifurcated bundt cake finds a way to get it taken down.
HIS COCKY VALET.
The peak petty of
#cockygate
.
Come the fuck at me, Faleena. I'm waiting for my C&D.
Come. At. Me.
Trauma responses don't understand time.
You can not think about someone for months, then stumble on some reminder--and that trauma response will hit like it all just happened and knock the fucking air out of you.
Not your fault.
And you don't have to be "over it" on schedule.
I want to point out that the majority of people Bouzy has alienated in the last couple of days are a mix of:
-Queer
-Neurodiverse
-BIPOC
-Disabled
-AFAB
-SA Survivors
We are the people he claims to advocate for, want to make a safe space for. So are our social networks.
For real, though--is *anyone* surprised the same people who've been telling marginalized authors for decades "Suck it up, the market just doesn't want diverse books"...
...now can't handle hearing "Suck it up, the market just doesn't want bigoted books"...?
Gotta shut social media down again as I have 3 books to finish by the new year, but I'm afraid to look away for a few days only to come back to a post-apocalyptic wasteland where all surviving romance authors are now radioactive aquatic fish people, but at least there's no RWA.
oh my god now the same friend is trying to understand why Gargoyles fucked a large portion of us up
do
do I dare even *mention* Labyrinth and the Goblin King to this sweet summer child
So this whole trend of "Maybe I did something wrong from a place of privilege, but you were wrong for calling out how it harmed you from a place of marginalization because you have more followers than I do, making me the TRUE victim" needs to fucking stop.
Don't think people will have a realistic idea of what current "AI" actually is until they stop even calling it artificial intelligence and start calling it generative assistance. "_____ intelligence" is a misnomer that lets snake oil salesmen brand it as something it isn't.
Those things, too, are significant--and it is *inherently* political to even be able to do that.
To show yourselves/ourselves as beings of many whims, beings of joy, beings who are defined by beauty other than our oppression.
Having more Twitter followers does not make someone immune to the mental, social, economic, and physical harm caused by bigotry.
And it does not make them immune to the fallout when you flex privilege to hurt them, even if you have fewer followers.
Stop acting like it does.
Been thinking for *days* about the people screaming that posting this pic was playing the disability card.
Y'all Halli is not wheelchair-optional? It's not an accessory? This is who he is every day.
You're just uncomfortable having to see it and grapple with your own biases.
A white cis straight woman with a small-to-middling platform was able to successfully deplatform a WOC with a middling-to-large platform simply because her racism was called out.
And the systems in place upheld her white privilege.
Despite Courtney's higher Twitter followers.
How to destroy your career in five steps:
1. Decide you are the first and only genius of your kind.
2. Pull a Kanye. Attack the very people who support you.
3. Send out C&Ds protecting your genius brand.
4. Wait.
5. Watch the entire romance community unravel your bullying shite.
...y'all
I was poking around at a website for work to get information for something I'm writing.
And accidentally became an ordained minister.
Like seriously, I can perform weddings and shite.
I.
What did I just do.
The funniest thing about this is how many of us are just tweeting through it, enough to make things trend, even though MOST OF US CAN'T EVEN SEE EACH OTHER.
There is -nothing- wrong with gratitude flowing from creators to patrons. I may not have many patrons myself considering I'm only newly started and only posting preview content, but I am -grateful- for their support, their help, this community.
Particularly for creatives, much of patron support comes from a sense of community. People who -want- to support and uplift authors, artists, musicians, etc. who struggle to find mainstream ways to fund their creations, their lives.
(tiny psa)
(often if I respond to you with nothing but hearts it's because i'm bad at words to other people and easily embarrassed and rather awkward)
(and i'm not snubbing conversation with you)
(i'm just saying i love what you said but i am tongue-tied but you are amaze)
You know what I want at this point?
I want to hear from the publisher who cancelled Kathryn Lynn Davis's alleged three-book contract.
I want to see them step up and tell
@romancewriters
to cut the crap.
That they made an ethical decision, which the RWA seems incapable of.
...all these people turning Courtney Milan vs. Chris Bouzy into white woman vs. Black man over the mess at Spoutible when Courtney isn't even white...y'all.
Marginalized folx with large platforms usually had to work 10x as hard to attain them, sacrifice 10x as much labor, deal with 10x the harassment.
And it takes 1/10th the effort for privilege to destroy it all, because positions of power will (almost) always side with privilege.
CRIMINAL INTENTIONS S1E1 is finally here! It has:
-Bi silver fox Persian American Mizrahi Jewish hero
-Gay demigray ace Korean American hero
-Intense murder mysteries
-Age gap
-V. grumpy boys
-Slow burn + much denial
-Little intimacies
And it's on Patreon:
Y'all.
I ordered a mid-range laptop off Amazon so I could work from bed on bad flare-up days by remoting into my main desktop.
I just unboxed it.
Manufacturer seal still on the box at the time.
This is what I find.
...
Yes, that is a textbook, and a rock in a plastic bag.
What I cannot forgive is:
-Going live with an open API backdoor allowing data harvesting.
-Having a godawful TOS (and not just about explicit content).
-Not having a registered DMCA agent.
-Not even understanding basic technical terms, laws, and standards.
For a while now a lot of people have operated under the erroneous assumption that platform size is an equivalent to systemic privilege, and it is not. Especially not for marginalized folk.
And the RWA decision has proved that beyond the shadow of a doubt.
HIS COCKY VALET is now 11,300 words of sheer spite-driven fun. I need some *sleep,* but back to blitz writing tomorrow. *salutes and toddles his petty arse off to bed*
#cockygate
Also?
Tomorrow I start a new treatment for my depression + anxiety. One that also has indications for like 75% of the physical symptoms of my immune disorder.
*deep breaths* If this is effective, it could change a lot for me. A. Lot.
Fingers crossed.
PSA: Stay the fuck out of reviewer spaces.
Particularly if you're an author.
Do not tell reviewers what they can and cannot say, or how they can or cannot feel about a book, or how they're allowed to rec/not rec.
It's invasive. Bad author behavior. Punching down.
Stop.
Darlings.
Fellow creative folks.
You are not devaluing your work, cheapening it, making it tawdry, or somehow ruining its purity by learning the business side of how being a creative professional works.
This goes double for my marginalized creative babies.
The problem is the people at
@doubtible
had a fully-functional Spoutible clone up and running within *hours,* with limited code knowledge and with more features than Spoutible.
Because all those features Bouzy says are in development?
Can be toggled on and off out of the box.
1. This didn't happen so hard it never happened in even the most Dada-esque alternate timeline.
2. ...bonus holes? Bonus holes. Bonus. Holes. BONUS HOLES. Holes for bonusing. Bonus of the holes. A hole bonus. Bonus holes.
Didn't read that in Kronk's voice, I can't help you.
I'm on my third
#OurFlagMeansDeath
watch and one thing that keeps striking me that I didn't mention before:
Oluwande is Black, fat, queer; smart, soft, empathetic.
And he's loved.
Loved, important to the story, important to others.
I love that so much.
Y'ALL
Y'ALL
Y'ALL
OMG
Y'ALL
wait let me stop shrieking
but
OVER AND OVER AGAIN BROKE THE TOP 100 IN GAY ROMANCE ON AMAZON WITH A GODDAMNED PREORDER
y'all are just
I
You are fucking amazing, all of you. Hope you know that.
💗
Fuck. Oh fuck. Didn't mean to drop that bombshell and disappear. Just...I'm probably in the wrong profession for someone who runs from the spotlight the way I do.
I'm crying right now. Crying at the overwhelming support, belief. Crying that the right thing was done. Thank you.
do you ever wonder how many of you grew up with a closeted queer parent and never knew it because the demands of heteronormativity + socially acceptable homophobia made them bury it
like
i'm just thinking a lot lately about my own bi dad and his self-hatred
and
just
yeah
This tweet has been sticking with me a lot as an example of Bouzy's narcissistic tactics.
It's easy to accept it on its face. *Believing* it, however, requires a credulous audience--which he's spent some time building.
Actually think about it?
And it makes no sense at all.
...this is not what I was expecting when I saw "Cat Pervert" trending but it's so, so much better than my expectations
"YOU'RE HARBORING OUR CAT!"
Goddamn, if I was a cat I wouldn't go home to that either. *cackles*
Seeing people excusing Lauren Hough's behavior as a "panic attack."
I have panic attacks on the reg. I usually *can't* tweet because I'm curled up in a shaky ball trying to calm the feeling of pure sourceless terror clenching in my chest--sometimes for minutes, sometimes hours.
*whispers* it's hEEEeeere
JUST LIKE THAT from
@CarinaPress
is now live on all retailers!
...now I'm going to go hide for the rest of the day, as release days give me massive anxiety and I may just die a tiny bit
....sooooooooooo
HIS COCKY VALET is now 7,500 words long.
Today's the day I always take off to game with my little sister, but you can bet your arses I'll be back tonight to work on it some more.
(And CI)
(Swear I'll finish CI S1E3 for the early bird tier by Thursday)
#cockygate
Okay, so I want to talk about some stuff with power dynamics, expectations, and audience in
#Bridgerton
without being ready to blow a fuse over people's racism.
Some of this will be about That Scene. Some of it won't.
Feel free to mute this thread.
So this is going to be my last thread on
#Spoutible
because I have vampires to write and very few people who haven't listened already will listen now. People are entrenched, it's become personal, and although I am trying to warn y'all...
Well, I'll just say my piece and be done.
Hey so when someone in phone or chat customer service helps you and you get those surveys after, *please* take the time to fill them out if you had a good experience. Those surveys often impact performance-related pay, job security etc. and many are expected to keep high ratings.
I wish more people trying to monetize AI writing and drawing (I will not call it art) in the U.S. realized that under current U.S. copyright law they can't copyright works produced by AI unless they have made significant human efforts to render it a unique derivative piece.
Pay👏🏾attention👏🏾to👏🏾this👏🏾.
I've tried in the past to ask white friends, cis friends, "Please don't do this, you're hurting me, this is why."
It took an act of trust every time.
And 8/10 that trust is betrayed by backlash that hurts 10x more than it would from an adversary.
So my IRS agent was a really really nice guy with a low husky soothing voice who sounded older and teased me about being single and was curious about my queer-arse books
...
Why does life keep giving me romance novel fodder
Like
That's a meet-cute right there
*adds to WIP list?*
I'm done. I will be blocking anyone who comes screaming into my mentions; I've seen it all, it's boring.
But usual disclaimer: I support the Sussexes. I am not MAGA, or in any way right-wing. So you can't use that to dismiss my doubts.
Sorry.
90% of being a writer with ADHD is trying to control every smallest detail of your environment to minimize distractions and maximize focus.
Only to spend so much time getting ready to write that you exhaust yourself and fall asleep without writing a single word.
If y'all click the Tiffany Haddish/Aries Spears trend, do not read the article unless you are seriously braced to deal with it. Graphic CWs for CSA/pedophilia, described in an extremely evocative and visceral way. I was not prepared. You probably aren't either.
Waiting for CRIMINAL INTENTIONS S1E1 to hit KindleUnlimited? IT'S HERE:
-Bi silver fox Persian American Mizrahi Jewish hero
-Gay demigray ace Korean American hero
-Intense murder mysteries
-Age gap
-Such grumps
-Slow burn + much denial
-Little intimacies
Oh my god I had to call back re: sending in photos and got a new agent and when he repeated "So you're saying...instead of a laptop you received a university textbook and a stone...in a bag?" I just lost my shite laughing again
Hearing someone else say it OUT LOUD I just
I
HOW
My entirely straight trash pickup guy wants to be a gay hero in one of my novels.
Me: ...you know I write really queer shite, right?
Him: Hey, if I get to be in a book, I'm flexible.
And he's the most adorably kind person and I'm weak, so now I'm trying to figure out if I can.
Y'all.
It's pretty clear at this point the people running the RWA are from the same demographic as the 52% of white women who voted for Trump, and the people who enabled them.
They're not going to make right.
Because they don't believe they're wrong.
These are not things you fix *after* they break.
These are things you hammer out before you write even a single line of code.
These are the things that show you are serious about creating a platform that protects its users.
Spoutible is not that.
Okay I've been mostly not getting deep on this, but this is bugging me, so...
People keep coming at
@RVAwonk
saying she can't say Bouzy asking her to a bar was uncomfortable because *she* chose the bar.
Except...she didn't.
It's always weird to me when people think their feelings about my queerness reflect my own feelings about my queerness.
Fuckers, I *love* being queer. Love. It.
And I'm not gonna pretend to have problems with myself just so you don't have to feel bad about your own queerphobia.
Just sent HIS COCKY VALET to my editor with the note "Sooooooooo...how soon can you get this back to me?"
Y'all. If I never tweet again?
She straight-up motherfucking murdered me. I'll leave clues. Avenge me.
Now pardon me while I go sleep the sleep of the petty and the dead.
How about we start by not viewing our politicians as sources of entertainment, since that's what got us into the mess of the last four years in the first place.
*whispers* no matter where you fall on the LGBTQIA2PP+ spectrum of intersections
there is no one way to be queer
no single right way to be queer
your queerness and how you express it are both valid
pass it on