Zoe York
@ZoeYorkWrites
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she/her / Zoh-ee / aka Ainsley Booth / latest 📕: The Scoring Secret / mutes twitter conversations to protect writing vibes / unbothered by typos
London, Ontario, Canada
Joined October 2012
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It's an audio release day for me! Out now: Fierce at Heart, from Tantor Media, available everywhere audiobooks are distributed. I've had some readers tell me they've found Reckless at Heart (book 1 in the series) via their libraries, which is great!
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The 10yo just told me a writing joke, you guys. *heart explodes*
10yo: A writer goes to the doctor and says, "Dr, I'm afraid of backstories." And then the doctor says, "Okay, when did it start?"
*dying*
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Actually, don't adapt romance novels into movies.
Romance novels need to be adapted into 10 hour long mini series.
Adapt romance NOVELLAS into movies.
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It's fiction. The appeal of age gap romance is not literal grooming. For many *very adult* readers, it's a self-insert do-over fantasy that replaces the reality of a less than ideal teenage introduction to sexuality. And the older, safer love interest is who they want now.
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I saw a request for a thread like this, so: Writing with Executive Dysfunction. I have ADHD and an anxiety disorder; I start lots of projects and struggle to finish them. But over eight years, I’ve (almost) consistently written a good number of romance books each year.
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I'm just catching up on the news that the USA Today bestselling books list just didn't come out this week, and nobody is talking about it, and it was compiled by ONE PERSON, and she was laid off this week.
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@emilymiller
Show me that you don't understand how you survived childhood without telling me you don't understand how you survived childhood.
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Do not let people who do not like your writing tell you what to write.
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I've written 60 romance novels. 20 of those heroines have had an abortion; not on the page, because there's a lot of their lives that aren't on the page, but I can tell you who they are.
Next year, it's on the page. And it's not trauma.
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There are so many good, plotty romances published every day. If you can’t find them, ask for recs.
But miss me with the idea that romance is weak right now.
Publishing has never been this rich or diverse before. Come on.
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Have I ever talked about the "I FUCKING SEE YOU" moment in a romance novel on Twitter before? I dunno, maybe I haven't.
A little thread about how Elizabeth Hoyt made me a better writer.
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@realDonaldTrump
Nobody liked it. Everyone called her on it. And why does your 11yo have access to Twitter?
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@realDonaldTrump
Parenting protip: social media isn't for kids. That means Baron and Eric need their smart phones taken away.
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@realDonaldTrump
And you have never shielded them from the upsetting bullshit that spews forth from your own mouth, so take a knee, Mr. Affronted.
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He didn’t self-publish her book. He stole her work and published it in the most boorish, amateur way possible.
It’s right in the name. Only she could self-publish it.
And he robbed her of that option, too.
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@realDonaldTrump
And that includes by a deadbeat father who spends weekends golfing instead of with his kid.
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A primer for journalists:
1. romance is a big tent genre, and includes both literary and escapist reads by the boat load
2. anyone who thinks they're doing something new in romance probably isn't
3. people who are doing interesting things tend to place themselves in the canon
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I've only ever self-published, so I can't provide any guidance on how to go hybrid, but for what it's worth I want to add some thoughts about the income models, because it's very different from trad publishing.
(Also, there isn't just one income model, there are many ways to SP)
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When you write small town romance and you get into a marketing strategies brainstorming session with dark romance authors.
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Wow, the receipts on Mark Dawson on Reddit are significant.
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@dgardner
@CicelyMcWilliam
But if no interpretation is entirely benign... what is the point of humouring him? Why does he deserve that civility?
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Dubious consent is a feature, not a bug, of many romance books. Pretending otherwise is weird. Most people don't want to say that out loud, so I'll take one for the team. And hopefully people who have muted Bridgerton talk won't see this dumped onto their timeline.
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@realDonaldTrump
But seriously, please don't invoke your kids here. They should rightly be off-limits for political use and abuse.
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Editor on a panel: Tiktok sells so many books but authors don’t need to do much! We love Colleen Hoover for example. Authors should be more like CoHo.
The SAME editor on the same panel: I can’t think of any self-pub authors we’ve acquired.
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I don't have any skin in the game with regard to the Goodreads voting thing, but I will gently point out that they regularly lie about editorial choices being data driven on their blog, when the data they share is weak AF compared to indie books being talked about on Goodreads.
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I really hope they land on their feet, and find new and exciting challenges.
I also hope Mary Cadden knows how much of an impact she had on publishing for so long.
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I am a DNF queen, that's just how I read, and I'm all for readers normalizing that and talking about it.
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Is there anything more wicked than the sucker punch in the feels that a romance novel can deliver? Like, you know this book ends happily, but somewhere around chapter five-before-the-end, you really cannot see how... that's wild.
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I just unfollowed Bradley Whitford, Chelsea Clinton, Monica Lewinsky, Preet Bharara and a bunch of other famous people who still follow JK Rowling.
I haven't unfollowed author mutuals yet, but that's next.
Friends, make this woman irrelevant. Seriously.
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We don't bring this kind of puritanical moralizing to horror, thriller, or domestic noir books. Stop bringing it to romance.
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@KatyaCobham
@BFriedmanDC
@brianstelter
Yeah, same. My husband has been an infantry NCO for 20 years. This disgusted us both.
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@CBSNews
And she was FINE. Put that in the headline, it’s the most relevant piece of of information to your audience.
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When an indie author TMed cocky, everyone piled on her. RWA benefited in a significant way, and the whole event was used to raise SIGNIFICANT funds.
Now a traditionally published, bestselling author is TMing the word dark.
I hope we hear more than crickets soon.
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@realDonaldTrump
Also, "children" are upset? The other four are adults and know how to read, search, and in theory, parse information.
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Here's the ugly side of publishing with KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing): sometimes, for no reason at all and with no warning, they just close accounts that have been in good standing for FOURTEEN YEARS.
Oh, Twitter. Do I have a story for you. The TL;DR version is: 38 books published over 14 years under 6 names and on Sunday, Amazon closed my publishing account. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. Follow along for another Adventure in Publishing.
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You guys... I asked my husband to draw me this and he did. 🥰
Yes, because we would all enthusiastically agree to this one. Can you imagine the sketches that would come out of this?
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Has anyone tried to USE Facebook recently? It's completely dysfunctional. I'm seeing a lot of chatter about the metaverse and no legs, and that's all valid, but the actual basic website that everyone used to use? The thing that actually gave the company value? No longer works.
Don't know how much this has broken through from the business and tech press but you could say Facebook's market cap has dipped a bit.
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Chatting with a friend this morning about writing filthy sex scenes, and how daunting that is. Honestly, my advice is, don't worry about the sex scene. Focus on writing a filthy foreplay scene instead.
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And I have a lot of feelings. First of all, deep compassion for everyone who unexpectedly left that company this week, right before the holidays. That blows.
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Just say you've never fallen headfirst into a series about horny orcs or dukes or baseball players, it's okay.
whenever I hear people bragging about reading 100 books a year or whatever I just think, you are so obviously posturing as intellectual for vanity purposes and not reading enough things that are challenging for you or engaging with them deeply
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As requested, some tips for self-publishing on a shoestring budget. I have a lot of thoughts here, so I'm going to try to front load the basic tips, then expand on some concepts.
Assuming you know exactly what you want to publish and you're familiar with SPing, ways to save $$$:
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Lauren Hough repeatedly lashes out at critics (of her work, of other people’s work) in inappropriate ways. I’m sure at some point she’ll find a way to profit off that. You know who won’t? Fair critics.
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People like wealth in fiction because it hits pleasure points in the brain. They don't necessarily actually like dukes and billionaires and professional athletes. Stop shaming people for reading things that make them feel good.
Feeling good is mighty important.
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Publishing is always about money, hello capitalism, and there's probably BIG MONEY in those Bridgerton paperback covers for Avon, but those covers don't match the inside of the books.
It's a choice.
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I went to school for women's studies. All of my professors were radical feminists and communists.
They weren't the ones who taught me that I shouldn't depend on a man.
That lesson was taught to me by all the middle-aged housewives around me who'd been left by their husbands.
Incorrect Maxime Bernier, women are not brainwashed. Women have learned that they cannot rely on men simply by their behaviors.
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Deleting my dating apps cos I want to meet someone the old fashioned way: a one-night stand the night before I start a new job, only to find out that hot stranger is my new boss.
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Someone pointed out to me that this is shelved as YA on Goodreads sometimes. Good lord. Well, nope. It's not YA. The audience for age gap romance is adults, not teens.
And if the publisher is doing that after acquiring it, that's bullshit.
Bring back spicy covers, my God.
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The forbidden aspect is often just the tension driving factor that makes it a complete *story* vs just a spicy fantasy.
You don't need to like it, but the comments trying to criminalize it are hilarious.
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Bonus content for books is a powerful marketing tool, but sometimes authors get stuck on what to write for a new vignette for characters they've maybe moved on from. Here are some ideas:
* Wedding or commitment ceremony (if not in the book & if appropriate for the characters)
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Truly not necessary to pretend that the story you wanted to write has never been written before.
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If you see anyone talking about Alexandra Sokoloff and Sarra Cannon, please watch this video. Being accused of intellectual property theft is a nightmare she doesn't deserve. But also, fans of her HB90 system don't need it either.
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So if anyone is ever stuck on what to talk about to a group of new writers, I highly recommend just musing out loud about your process, and when you get the urge to put some fucking emphasis on a point, do it. It may change someone's writing forever.
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So I work best, and write best, when I:
* limit how much non-writing stuff I take on
* keep the writing process simple
* build my own hacks that feel organic
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Not here for a Damon Suede redemption tour. Really disappointed to hear writing groups are booking him as a speaker.
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I have deleted three attempts at a comment on hating on small town romance, but I'll just say this: there are just as many authors subverting and improving this corner of romancelandia as there are in, say, historical romance.
Collective subversion is romance's strength.
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Something the anti-abortion crowd will never understand is how strongly those of us who have given birth by choice feel about protecting that choice for others.
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Warren Kinsella is gross. He's no champion of women. But anyway, the tweet should be, "I can't believe no party has won a federal election with a female leader yet." Because Kim Campbell was as elected as Trudeau is--as an MP.
But go off, gross man.
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When your husband is in the army, his working from home language is not always conducive with background noise for children doing virtual learning: a tale of woe from my open concept home, where a grade 4 class just heard "what a fucking nutbag" echo down from upstairs.
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Twitter is not the forum for this, but Twitter is where publishing conversations happen right now, so in short strokes: this thread is about how to self-publish a book that you believe in, that you think you can't go on sub with for XYZ reasons because of weird trad rules.
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@JuddLegum
There is no abortion debate. This is so distressing. As a person who has had an abortion, this is a bizarre and distressing topic to cover. My health care choices are not a belief. I do not care what anyone's religion says about my private health choices.
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My new favourite hobby is filling online shopping carts and then closing the browser tab.
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And there have been some that are on hiatus, or paused. *I often feel an outsized amount of guilt about both piles of work.* Managing guilt and negative self-talk is a big part of writing with executive dysfunction.
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I forget a LOT - commitments, resources, ideas. I buy planning tools and publishing resources and don't use them. I set up giveaways and forget to mail stuff to the winners. There's that guilt again, a desperate wish that my brain could hold more disparate thoughts at once.
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"Somewhere at around the 25-30% mark in my books, there is a moment where the heroine sees the hero for who he truly is, behind the mask he wears; she sees that he's not just an arrogant jerk, that he's more than that, and it pisses her off. It's an 'I see you' moment."
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We went camping. My 9yo announced “this environment is not a good fit for me.”
Everyone should have such healthy boundaries.
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I took a month off Twitter and wrote 80,061 words for Camp NaNo.
A thread.
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Blah blah blah nobody wants to hear about self-publishing because "it's not for everyone", but seriously, who is trad publishing for? Certainly not everyone.
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Tomorrow is "Stuff Your Kindle Day", which is really "Stuff Your Ereader Day", but I do want to acknowledge that I called it Stuff Your Kindle Day first (in 2014, for like, one promo, maybe two).
And this is a good time to talk about how many people are new to ebooks right now.
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I want to do a thread about how I spent money (and didn't) when I started publishing, and what I would recommend now, especially for advertising/marketing dollars.
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You know what? There are a TON of romance novels with older protagonists. This is not actually the gap in the market people think it is, and I'm over feigning a response that is not "hey, did you even Google?"
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Okay, I've seen a third indie author post about this on Facebook, so I'm officially calling it: an Amazon bot is on a tear with these account closures, and all indie authors should brace themselves for this potentially happening in the near future. Here's what I recommend:
Another KDP account termination out of the blue! What is going on over there????
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Has anyone done a deep dive on this phenomenon?
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I'm a romance author, and I have a big-ish newsletter list of people who want to get emails from me about my romance books. Occasionally I share things that might be seen as political, that are deeply personal to me, like abortion rights, etc. I always get some pushback.
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I see that Alexandra Sokoloff posted a new Facebook message last night, doubling down that Sarra Cannon is a Bad Person for learning something from AS's book and class, and daring to talk about how much she loved that lesson (making lists!), and even worse, linking to AS's books.
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Normalize sex. Normalize complicated sex, and freaky sex, and awkward sex, and talking about all of it.
But if people make money off of being puritans and hurt others for the same things they do themselves, I can't find sympathy for when they're outed for being human.
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Do not let anyone make you think it’s necessary to spend thousands of dollars to self-publish a book.
It’s not.
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Can’t believe I’m saying this, but it’s another day where I decide to defend a sub genre of romance I don’t read or write: look, I know dark romance isn’t for everyone, but at least it hasn’t lost the cover plot like the rest of publishing.
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Books can be successful:
* out of the gate
* years after release
* in digital only
* primarily in print
* as bestsellers
* as niche evergreen sellers
* as quiet backlist books
* as a stepping stone to different success down the road
* as learning opportunities
* as catharsis
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This is just a random person on the internet, being deeply wrong, which is normal and not really fixable, but can we just pause to reflect on how deeply twisted the narrative about vaccines has gotten that people don't remember how normal they were for most of us 2 years ago?
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Normalize that not all books (popular or not) are for all people. I never have complete overlap in reading taste with anyone else I know.
So this is to say if you have 5 samples on your eReader by a popular author and you’ve never actually finished one of them, save your money. They’re not for you.
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Bumping this again tonight, because the more Amazon automates the decision tree that (quickly, rapidly, unexpectedly) leads to account termination, the more self-published authors will find their business suddenly out in the cold, with zero recourse.
This should be newsworthy.
If anyone knows a tech reporter who wants a story, the bots have taken over Amazon's KDP account management and there is no meaningful human oversight*
* I think, this is just a theory
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This is where she stopped and corrected herself. "It's an 'I FUCKING SEE YOU' moment, and it makes her MAD. Sometimes I have to go back in and revise that to make it stronger."
I didn't hear anything else she said in the workshop. I'm sure it was amazing.
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A couple of people have pointed to this YouTube video as his probable source of the joke:
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How many em-dash insertions is too many em-dash insertions, the Zoe York story. Because—and this is key—that's just how my brain tells stories.
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From the outside, some of the things I struggle with may not be obvious. I can’t promise that what DOES work for me will work for anyone else, but if any of this resonates, that's great.
First, for all the projects that I have finished and published, a LOT have been abandoned.
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Three things I try to celebrate:
* grace
* do-overs
* wipe-cleans
The weight of feeling like I've failed on any given day (which happens a lot, despite what I put out there as my public face) is lessened when I firmly refuse to carry that weight into the next day.
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New adult fiction only "did not pan out" if you actively ignore all of romance and romance adjacent books featuring protagonists 18-25, of which there are a LOT, and many LIVE on the USAT list, but okay, go on
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Time to dust off the Secret Service story I've had on ice for four years, because the way they're protecting her here is hot.
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(I will check with him in the morning, because he's asleep and it's a school night)
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It's my birthday!!!! I'm 41 years old and I have like half of the things a magazine article says women over 40 shouldn't have, so I feel like I'm definitely on the right track in life. Also, the final season of Schitt's Creek AND a new Jackie Lau book are out today.
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Another lesson I learned a long time ago from a fellow romancelandia writer, in this case the lovely Sasha Devlin: how to take a regular stock photo and make it pop instantly.
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