#i also don't trust upfront payments anymore re: sensitivity readers

[not-poignant]

What is Tradewinds?

Tradewinds was an original Fae Tales novel set in the canonical universe, that has been shelved due to me not being able to find Aboriginal Australian sensitivity readers who were happy to read gay male/male sex scenes.

It was based on a separate cast and set in Australia and Malaysia, with their series being part of the 'MerchantVerse.' Basically how merchants trade, who they trade with, and the stronger Seelie and Unseelie divide among fae.

The story features Matan, a Malay Seelie peacock pheasant shifter and master merchant specialising in selling batik, needing to find a cure for an Unseelie curse placed on his cousin. To go on the journey necessary to get information, he pretends to be Unseelie, and joins an Unseelie merchant caravan of birds of prey (almost all raptor shifters are Unseelie). There, he meets Udir, a Romansh bearded vulture/lammergeier shifter who is frequently down on his luck, and has worked as an assassin in the past.

Udir finds out Matan is actually Seelie, and then blackmails him into sex, thinking that he's being clever, only to not realise that Matan's very clever too.

And then it was basically about Matan and Udir falling in love, Matan going on an Eran-like journey of learning to understand that the difference between Seelie and Unseelie isn't as black and white as he thought, and finding the cure for his cousin, and learning about trading in Australia with his Unseelie merchant friends, while dealing with a pretty awful villain in the meantime.

It's very found family.

I really like the story, and I think with a little reworking, the novel would be super strong. However there's literally only one white main character, and everyone else is either Maori or Aboriginal Australian or Malay etc. so while I was able to get some of the sensitivity reading done, some of it I couldn't get done (and I lost money in the process, because one person said they would sensitivity read for me, asked for a $150 deposit about 7 years ago, and then took it and never talked to me again, which was frankly very demoralising and depressing, because like, as a disabled, chronically ill person with cancer, I kind of needed that money too, lmao).

So...the book is pretty much permanently shelved. I did share some chapters on Patreon under a redundant tier (which would now be the $10+ tier, but I need to edit those posts to reflect that). And everyone who's ever read it thinks I should publish it. I just...don't feel comfortable with that given I'm writing Indigenous side characters.

Sula did a really lovely sketch of Matan though: