#publishing asks

[moonshine-nightlight]

Would you ever release signed copies of Don't Shoot the Messenger?

the short answer is: yes, i'd love to do signed copies of 'Don't Shoot the Messenger'!

the long answer is: logistics are hard lol. in order for me to hav copies to sign, i'd hav to order author copies from amazon (paying for them in advance personally), sign them, and then mail them to ppl myself. this is definitely doable, but the mechanism for selling since it wouldn't b through amazon itself and actually collecting payment/mailing info would hav to be worked out.

a vague plan that i hav in mind now would be either to just do a limited run where people can essentially pre-order paperbacks via not amazon for lik a month that they were available and then i'd know how much to get and sign etc. i dont hav a patreon so i think i would try to do it through kofi where if u pay a set amount and say its for a signed copy i would then be able to send a signed book to u, after i messaged back for your address to mail it. this would obviously only work small scale but would likely more than suffice for now.

or if i decide to add a hardcover version, i could offer signed hardcovers as a promotion for a similar limited time and via a similar process as above. i'll probably do a poll at some point to see if anyone would even want a hardcover. same for dale

when will i hav the time to look deeper into all this and put it in action? no idea. life's been extremely busy, but its definitely been on my radar and i will try to make it happen in the next coming years.

i suppose if i ever did some sort of in-person book/author event after Dale is out, i might be able to offer signed books in person, but that'd likely b hard to reach for most ppl lol

until then, only one person has a signed copy - one of my beta readers who i thanked in my acknowledgements for being so wonderfully supportive!

[saintmichale]

Speaking of your job, can I ask, how does one even get into publishing? I was an English major, but finding jobs as an editor seems like such a difficult task. Whenever I search for "editor" on indeed it never seems like there's any actual book editing jobs.

Hey there! Personally, I majored in editing and publishing specifically in university, and during that time I attended a number of trade conferences and networked with a lot of guest speakers that would visit my classes. That led to an internship one summer which quickly turned into the job I have now. My recommendations:

1. Make connections wherever you can, even if they seem insignificant.

2. Make an effort to immerse yourself however possible into the publishing world, you’ll be surprised what you find (conferences, publishing groups, freelance jobs, inquiries, building visits).

3. Look for opportunities everywhere to work. I got my start finding WEBTOON artists that were just starting their webcomics and offering a discounted indie artist price to copy edit for them. A lot of people don’t realize they would benefit from having an editor, but you can help them see why you’d be a good fit. This helps bulk up your portfolio and gets your name out there.

4. Join editing guilds and groups. We share jobs with eahcother all the time, and internal hiring is happening more often than you think.

[faffreux]

it's weird to be attracted to an ugly frog like wtf is even your taste in men

i won't argue with you about whether or not fawful is ugly but it is weird yes, i agree

i have long accepted that i am weird

[triona-tribblescore]

I WANNA DRAAWW!! RAHHHGG!! Absolutely swamped with college work, im so tired TT (hence whatever tf this is lmao)

[inkskinned]

my father told me he read it, but he hasn't read it. that's okay. my friends keep picking the words out of my throat.

someone once told me that the more trigger warnings that go on a book, the better it is. i didn't mean to write something with so many conditional phrases - i was writing about what i felt while being a human. sometimes you are a person and sometimes you are a statistic. sometimes it is falling upwards and sometimes it's sliding back down again.

my father tells me that it will be difficult to get people to read it. i didn't like the idea of a singular genre. i'm not going to lie to you - it is actually a difficult book to get through. i change the rules in it. it's not poetry or prose explicitly. it's neither false nor reality. i give you the tools to "solve" the book, but i let you do the thinking. my father says people don't care to think. i don't know about that - i think we just, like, enjoy reading.

the thing is - i was tired of stories about survival where someone with depression goes to therapy and wakes up okay. i didn't live like that. i was tired of books about violence, where the gore of what i experience was splashed in glitter to lick off the page. like, i was a person, you know? i had a life and a job and a family. and in books, i watched my story get ripped up so people could explore the viscera of my body. so they could feel good. my brother once called it inspiration pornography. we had walked out of a suicide-prevention seminar, both of us disgusted while the increasingly-elated presenter kept listing methods-of. i remember the look on my brother's face. like i would tear that man apart given the right time and place.

my father says that kids these days. he warns me against writing about things that are too-serious. he says that they don't want it. i don't listen. he does make me take out a scene from the book where i go to church after having sex with a woman. it used to be the 7th scene in the book. i don't think he's read further than that, it rocked him too hard to continue.

it's a book about being queer. it's a book about being raised catholic. it doesn't have monsterfucking, i'm sorry. it's just about, like.

at some point you have to choose to stay here. and then you do have to stay here, which takes practice. this is about forming the habit. this is about what happens after you've already started doing the work. because, like. you keep going. you have to. and it's like. very imperfect.

i should make a post on instagram. i should make this announcement less bittersweet. but like -- i'm giving it you, specifically, because i think you know why i had to write it. you and me. this little community.

body's a bad monster. here's the link if you're interested in ordering.

[crustaceousfaggot]

Hey did you guys know that in rock climbing if you're the first person to climb a route, you get to name it? And that there are no exceptions or caveats to this rule?

[eggchef]

reverse version of 4x01 with angel dean and hunter castiel

[stopaskingmetocreateanaccount]

you are a SPINELESS COWARD where's his fucking TEXTURE where are the EXPOSED WIRES. the visible mechanical bits are part of his ALLURE you DIPSHIT

[tyrannosaurus-maxy]

most of max's special helmets. which one is your fav?

[hedgehog-moss]

I love the calzone post because the first 80% I was like "This is a bit intense, but perhaps they just live a different life than I do" and then you said 'vraiment' and I was like "Ah, French (or perhaps Wallonian)! That makes sense! I now understand the extreme social pressure!"

(btw sorry if you're actually Algerian or Quebecoise or something, I don't know anything else about your blog)

Your ask made me laugh! And I love that you're not the only one—someone else reached the end of that post and went "ah, French, well that explains it"

I thought maybe the sentence "Naturally my first assumption was that [the chef] was judging me for my food order" would make it clear that this was happening in France! I was actually telling a non-French friend the other day (when discussing a piece of US media) how insane it felt to hear a "French" character say "the customer is always right" in a restaurant.

But sometimes the customer gets impromptu catzones and that makes everything worth it <3

[choccy-milky]

Babes you got my foaming at the mouth every time you post or update! This new chapter was so precious!!

Modern AU where the only thing that’s different was instead of an illustration of Sherlock Holmes, it’s a picture of Banana Pumpkinpatch

GIRL THE WAY I GOOGLED "BANANA PUMPKINPATCH CHARACTER" BEFORE REALIZING YOU MEANT BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH LMFAOOO 😭😭😭 but aww THANK YOU💖and this is amazing i had to draw it as soon as u sent it, i love that cloras love for sherlock holmes also works in a modern au setting. CLORAS LOVE FOR SHERLOCK IS ETERNAL

(and yes seb would read/watch it bc of her)

[canisalbus]

I met a dog who looks a lot like Machete-- even had similar temperament lol, she was pretty shy

She seems awfully sweet. I love her hairy toes and impressive arm fringes.

[northstarscowboyhat]

Late night Magma doodles

(Also because I feel like this needs to be clarified; the joke is that Clover got the step dad shirt from Starlo ((hence why its oversized on them)). Clover still uses they/them pronouns in this AU.)

[c-rowlesdraws]

(Note: I’m writing this in good faith and not trying to come across confrontational)

Have u forgotten u can vote 3rd party? I know there will likely not be enough people voting independant party for a non red or blue president to be elected THIS voting cycle. But. If enough people vote independent maybe america will wake up and realize there are more than 2 shitty options. (It takes time to change, and change for the better)

Look the problem with the blue no matter who mindset is that these people know you are going to vote for them no matter what. Not because you necessarily like them but because at least they aren’t the other guy. Which gives dems absolutely no incentive to not be a piece of shit. Like do you get it? They will be awful and endorse genocides and all other terror because they know you will let them get away with it. Maybe biden isn’t as bad as a republican would have been but he is still pretty fucking bad. Personally, morally, I cannot in any way justify voting for him again.

voting for someone as damage control in an election does not mean you can't heckle the shit out of them once they are in office. You elect the officials you think you and groups you belong to have the better chance of pressuring into better policies, and who will do the least amount of damage in the meantime.

Democrats are relentless towards their elected officials-- at least the ones I know who are actually politically active are. They call, they protest, they campaign. Plus, as you're demonstrating, people on the left do not blindly vote (that's the other guys). It's totally unrealistic to say that elected Democratic officials just think they have an easy ride.

people can and should vote for whoever they want to in local elections, primaries, etc. But in the big one, the president one, the one in the fall, voting third party is like drawing up plans for a nice new extension on a house that is actively being set on fire. Voting for president is damage control. Voting is your hard-fucking-won civil right. Voting in smaller elections can also be damage control; when there is no-one to feel "good" about voting for, you vote for the less-worse one, because maybe that one is more receptive to the idea of climate change being real than the other one, and you can work with that.

Sometimes you get to vote for the option you align with the most. But sometimes voting is about picking the option with the cracks that you can dig your fingers into and pull open. Or at least the one who won't start taking a sledgehammer to civil rights and environmental protections (and, and) with all his buddies while you work to build support behind a candidate you can feel good about voting for in four years.

Biden has shown he can change his policies over time, with pressure. Democrats can be swayed in ways Republicans cannot. One major party can be pushed more left. The other one will drag us into a darkness that I don't even want to think about. The presidency is about so much more than just the individual sitting in the Oval Office.

Voting is strategic. It is strategic. It is not negative moral karma to vote strategically. It is one action amidst all the other actions you can take to fight for the future you want.

[nicosraf]

Wait what did Freydis Moon do? :( I've read their books and really liked them, but I don't follow them anywhere online, so that last ask you got worried me

Freydis Moon has been exposed to be Taylor Barton, a white person from the state of Oregon, someone who had a history of faking their race, being racist, and general abusive behavior. You can read more here about this Taylor person here, and you can find an incredibly long thread here.

Freydis was a colleague of mine, and they took me under their wing when I entered the indie book scene. They presented themselves as a Latine, mystic, queer trans author — who was older than me, I should add — so I deeply admired them and confided in them. I don't think ABM would have ever gotten much attention if I hadn't received their guidance.

There had been some whispers that Freydis was really Taylor, but I'd seen Frey's seemingly darker-skinned hands and heard their real name, which was supposedly Daniela.

Two things I should say before the big reveal: Freydis briefly hired a publicist named Cordi, who was also an agent with their own agency, named The Lynne Agency. Cordi, very randomly, decided to leave the industry and left their clients, and Freydis, hanging. Someone else to mention is Saint Harlow, an author of gay, cannibal erotica. On twitter, Saint was known for peddling a lot of drama — sometimes, he was on the good side of things and sometimes the bad, but he tended to be a massive bully. Freydis allegedly comforted some of Saint's victims.

And the reveal:

Freydis is the race faker Taylor Barton. The evidence is substantial, but most notably, some of the files they shared with other authors, including me, had metadata with the names of Taylor Barton's other identities. I was able to check the files myself to confirm.

They were also Saint Harlow. Meaning Freydis was bullying people secretly on one account and comforting them on another. And the bullying was a lot more disgusting than you might think, but for the sake of the victim, I won't share details.

They were also the publicist/agent Cordi. Why did they pretend to be an agent at all? I'm not sure but they wasted a lot of authors' times, that's for sure. Were they just looking to plagiarize off manuscripts sent to them? Who knows. (A friend of mine who sent their manuscript to them fears so).

There were a lot of interactions between Taylor and I that are much much weirder in retrospect. They critiqued the industry use of #ownvoices, which I agreed about, but blew the issue out of proportion, like thinking #ownvoices gay-trans author book lists shouldn't exist because of potential outing, mlm books by mlm authors lists shouldn't exist because of potential outing, and that lists of books by people of color about people of color also shouldn't exist because... potential outing? Taylor was, to me, oddly sympathetic toward certain authors accused of racism and shot down my concerns of a certain book with what I felt to be pro-colonizer themes inconsistently — their response to racism seemed to depend on whether they already disliked a person or not.

I could say a lot more but as someone who spoke to Taylor in private at times, there were a lot of things I was unsure about even when I was on their side of things. To some people, apparently, Freydis had said they were part Mexican, but only ever told me they were Peruvian (they might've known I'd clock them as a faker). Regardless, when this all came to light, their response was shockingly dismissive.

This may be more info than you asked for but TLDR:

Freydis Moon faked their race and ethnicity, bullied and manipulated many readers and authors using various fake identities, took advantage of latine author resources, and so on.

[hugheses]

the squad at the zach bryan concert