Tess Sharpe
@sharpegirl
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NYT Bestselling Author. Whirlwind of murder, dog hair & gingham. Rep: Jim McCarthy
Joined December 2008
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Our girl, conning her way onto the NYT list. 😂
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My favorite fact about Angela Lansbury is that during her MURDER SHE WROTE era she made it a practice to hire guest actors of the golden age that had aged out of the game because it allowed them to earn the union points they needed for insurance, pensions, etc.
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Re: my last RT. My fellow white women: reacting in the moment as an ally is deeply important. You need to PRACTICE. You need to have a mental check list in your head of what to do.
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Someone asked me to expand on this and I don't celebrate Christmas, so buckle up, y'all. Writing and reading Romance improves you as a writer in all aspects, but I'll get into the specifics in this thread.
Reading and writing Romance makes you a better writer in any genre.
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Reading and writing Romance makes you a better writer in any genre.
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Again, we ask: where the hell are the publishers in all this?
Because we know where this leads on the publishing front: publishers not buying queer books because school/library market is being controlled by fascists.
The bill will charge schools $10,000 a day for having
#LGBTQ
books and blacklist school librarians who allow such books to stay on the shelves.
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And a final thing, remember: this is not about YOUR anger. Your anger has no place here. Your job is to be calm and never escalate a situation the officers are looking for a chance to escalate. Because you won't be the one they will escalate on. The person of color will be.
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Today I realized it's been ten years since I was offered my first book deal. I have officially been in publishing for a decade, with 7 years of querying before that. So! Ten Things I have learned:
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Your job is to remind the officers that white ladies can be a damn nuisance. And a lot of paperwork. And what if this one is related to somebody important? What if this one writes letters to the editor? She's texting someone my badge number, is this really worth it?
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Writers, I have a question (yes, this is related to the Kidney story): do you copy and paste other people's writing and then re-write it? It was talked about like this act was TOTALLY normal. Is this a lit fiction thing they teach you? Am I just weird that I've never done this?
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Romance makes you better at creating main characters. You have to create a character that not only readers fall in love with, but they understand why their intended partner falls for them AND the reader has to stay in their corner even when they're screwing up!
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I'm going to thread about what's happening because I can already see things spiraling.
For over a year, a group of Far From You readers have made it a habit to "joke" about killing me, breaking into my home, etc. I ignored this until I started getting tagged last year.
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The idea that a writing career is about passion and not business is a very prevalent idea in our industry. That adage "don't quit your dayjob" yes? I hate that adage with a passion. It is an attitude designed to keep marginalized people out and not even trying to break in.
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A few months ago, I put myself between a man of color and two police officers who were harassing him. I was able to do this calmly and automatically because my mother trained me how to do it and I've spent years thinking about how to react if I had to use my whiteness this way.
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Oh! I did not realize this was getting announced any time soon! Millie is a phenomenally talented person and I could not be more pleased she has decided to tackle playing Nora (& Haley & Katie, etc).
Millie Bobby Brown will star in & produce THE GIRLS I'VE BEEN. A new Netflix film adapted from Tess Sharpe's novel, the thriller follows a con artist who must use her powers of persuasion & impersonation to free herself, her girlfriend & ex-boyfriend from a bank hostage situation
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Wow, do I like the person who wrote this legal brief thing:
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Oh, I see we’re talking publishing money, the four payment system designed to destroy us and the virulent attitude among publishing that the money publishers pay writers is just a fun lil’ gift we get for writing a book. My favorite subject!
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So let's talk about some normal things a writer can ask a publisher if they've received an offer, shall we?
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Romance makes you better at creating Secondary characters, because often, you'll be spinning off a book about them someday. So you have to make your secondary characters fully fleshed from the start--you never know who readers might fall in love with and want a book about.
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I've seen some threads attacking the author who called out the bookstore, particularly from locals, so I want to address some things: a bookstore can be perfectly fine for a customer and terrible for an author.
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This is the work we must do. Those officers never would've touched me. I was never in danger for a moment. Use the enormous privilege you have for good if a time comes where you need to step up and be an actual shield.
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You've got to be prepared. Keep your phone charged and in easy access. Know where your recording apps are. Who will you text badge numbers to so there's a record? Go through it in your head until it feels as natural as holding your keys between your fingers in a parking lot.
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Romance teaches you how to create engaging subplots and how to interweave them into the larger plot of "how to we get these two love interests together forever!" It teaches you how to juggle these things, when to have a light touch, when to have a heavier one.
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Romance teaches you pacing and timing. You can't have the leads kissing or getting together TOO fast or TOO slow. You have to juggle it properly with the aforementioned subplots, so they're running smoothly and concurrently.
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Romance challenges you to get creative. Your reader knows at the end of the day, what the end game is: the 2 leads happily ever after. But they don't know HOW they're going to get there. That's the challenge of Romance. To make the HOW fresh and interesting and engaging each time
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I'm still thinking about the biphobia of that agent + how inappropriate they acted. The bigotry is appalling, but the idea that agents are trawling through social media to find out who we are partnered to is also very creepy and boundary crossing.
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@MiriamForster
I have a whole thriller about the slow realization you come from a family of women who did this...and must find a way to do it again in modern times.
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Then, I just fixed the one across with me with a stare. The bitchiest, don't fuck with me, I'm a femme white lady stare I could summon. And I did not stop staring or move from that spot until they left. And they did leave.
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Romance teaches you more natural dialogue. They talk like real people to each other. There's a natural scansion. They interrupt. There's a rhythm in Romance dialogue and interactions that ALL writers interested in writing natural dialogue should observe.
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I am begging huge, established writers to stop saying stuff like this and actually remember a) the logistics of being a kid or teenager and b) realize that this is about the elimination of queer and BIPOC folks from books and life in order to spread christo-fascism.
Op-Ed by Margaret Atwood: "To those who seek to stop young people from reading The Handmaid’s Tale: Good luck with that. It’ll only make them want to read it." |
@TheAtlantic
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Romance teaches you chemistry. And I'm not just talking sexual or romantic chemistry. Romance teaches you how to write all kinds of relationships and connections and how to get that chemistry--be it romantic, friendship, parental, etc--to sparkle on the page.
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I then made a VERY BIG SHOW of taking down these officers names and badge numbers on my phone. I made sure the one next to me could see that I had texted this information to someone (my mom). I'm talking craning my neck to look at their badges, tilting my phone to show the screen
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Romance teaches you to create setting that readers fall in love with and identify with. Read a few small town Romances or a Western Series and you'll come away with a vivid idea of how to not just create lovable setting, but immersive setting.
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Seeing so many people respond to that guardian article with "I couldn't have done my writing career without my parents/partner's financial support." and that's the thing: publishing completely relies on that but also is really uncomfortable with admitting it.
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And then I gave the guy my phone number just in case and I called activist friends up in the community and made sure people were in the parking lot in case the cops came back so he could continue his petition work in peace.
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Oh wow, this AITA about the romance novelist whose boyfriend didn't realize she was a romance novelist (she didn't hide it! He just assumed!) and reacted like she'd burned all his copies of Infinite Jest when he realized is something:
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The first thing I did: I pulled out my phone. I made sure the officers SAW me pull out my phone. I made sure they saw me turn on the voice recording.
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The officers then tried to get me to be quiet. I said that I would be quiet, but that their reports were wrong, they were not listening to an eyewitness, and I was not moving from this spot until they left this man alone.
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The next thing: I calmly but firmly contradicted the officers. They insisted that they had gotten a call saying that this man was following people trying to get them to sign petitions. I told them I had been there for a half hour and he had not done anything of the sort.
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Another day, another article about how publishing is making record profits while their workers and creators get less and less while the industry expects more and more and I guess I'm wondering when we actually do something about this?
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This part of the story totally threw me. I've written over 75 books and it would never occur to me to do this. Like, sometimes I have quotes in my notes that INSPIRE me, but I wouldn't put them in my doc and re-vamp them as mine. Is it a writing exercise I don't know?
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I highly recommend creating a fictional diner/restaurant chain that you can use you in all your books. I just keep adding silly blackberry decor to the diners in each book and it amuses me so.
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Romance teaches you how to create stories and characters that people invest in. When you take those skills and apply them to other genres, that invitation to invest, to dig in, to CARE, is still there. Along with all the other great tricks you learned from writing Romance.
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Romance teaches you balance. You're balancing a main plot, several subplots, fully-fleshed secondary character development, fully fleshed immersive setting, making your readers fall in love with your MC's while your MC's are falling in love with each other. SO. MUCH. BALANCE.
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I think the thing that interests me the most about what Taylor has done with All Too Well is that now three pieces of storytelling exist, mainly written at one time in her life and therefore edited down to fit that public profile and now re-expanded it give the entire story.
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Which brings us to obstacles! Romance teaches you about obstacles. How to screw things up! You can't have your characters together too soon. You need conflicts, and they need to be unique, believable and conquerable--but not too conquerable.
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Romance teaches you about objectives. What do the characters want? This is something that young writers often struggle with in the book and the query: the ever shifting wants and needs of the characters, how to get this to come through, and what obstacles to put in their way.
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This is not healthy behavior. Nor is the swath of you who follow me under private accounts to endless quote tweet me on private. I am concerned if you are young and think it's funny to trigger a person's PTSD. You need to step back and consider if you truly think that's funny.
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& if you're quote tweeting this thread & mocking me or laughing at me, think about that: "I'm laughing at a sexual assault & abuse survivor who's being open about her struggle w/ self harm & suicidal ideation."
That is not funny. There is no way to explain around that behavior.
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I'm gonna talk about what happens next. And I want to apologize to the non-harassing readers this is going to effect. I've tried very hard to not get to this point, but here we are.
Here's what gonna happen: I'm no longer going to talk about Far From You publicly. At all.
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Reminder: it's 100% normal to have your agent give you a complete sub list (editors, imprints, etc) and it's 100% normal to ask for all the editorial responses to submissions to be forwarded to you.
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I remember when I was a young'un someone accused Meg Cabot of selling out and she wrote a whole blog post about being a working writer and was basically like "GONNA GO SELL OUT SOME MORE WRITING MY AWESOME BOOKS" and damn, did that make an impression on teen me.
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At that time, I made a thread expressing how uncomfortable these "jokes" were to me, an abuse and sexual assault survivor with PTSD who has received lots of very real death threats and invasions of privacy. I appealed to them to stop. They did not.
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What is rational is someone saying: "Hi, you and your friends repeated jokes about murdering me over a book I wrote a decade ago are freaking me out, can you please stop?"
What is cruel is to increase those "jokes" because I can't rationalize them as jokes in any way then.
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Some news from yesterday...
Millie Bobby Brown To Star And Produce Netflix’s Adaptation of ‘The Girls I’ve Been’; Jason Bateman’s Aggregate Films Also Producing
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Because I wore a fake wedding ring when I waitressed. "Belonging" to another man was the only way to get customers to back off.
#YesAllWomen
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This is where I remind all the unmarried authors: pre-nups are your friend. Your book rights are a commodity & valuable & should be protected. Because there's nothing more shitty than your ex getting a share of your royalties, especially if said ex didn't support your writing
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I was not kind to myself as a teen. And I am truly concerned, if this is how you view PTSD, you will not be kind to yourself or others if you find yourself in a trauma situation. Because you have proven you'll gleefully and knowingly be a trigger.
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Publishing is built on the assumptions that you either: a) come from generational wealth to fill the gap b) come from a career that can support you without writing and you can do both! At once! or c) are partnered with someone who can be your financial sponsor.
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So, I've noticed a lot lately that small presses are cropping up with predatory practices, but they're all couched in language of diversity and support for marginalized writers and I want to talk about it.
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Today I have a publishing contract in my inbox so I'm gonna talk a little about the "reading the contract" process as an author!
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So I want to talk about something that really came up during the "no questions allowed" agent thing last night, especially because it's been followed by a lying "we were hacked" excuse.
And that is an agent's temperment.
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Because these readers not only want freedom to harass me and threaten me, but they want access to the work that fans only get if a creator feels safe within a fandom. And they've created an environment where I don't feel safe, so now they try to trick me.
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Writers, I'm curious: do you type THE END at the end of your manuscripts?
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When I told my agent I was gonna self publish he said "Cool! Let me know if you want me to handle subrights like audio and translation." like a normal person who understands trade publishing isn't for every book and that I might like monthly royalties instead of twice a year.
Seeing some threads tonight about agents who are against authors self-publishing books, and honestly, in 2023, WTF???
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Re: unions. I had a meeting with producers last week about something and I was asked about my motivations for moving into screenwriting on top of being a novelist. I told them that while I really enjoyed the medium, my main motivation originally had been the health insurance.
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So, I have some very big news:
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I think a lot about people who try to write Romance or YA because of the idea it's easy money and they make the vital mistake of not respecting the category/genre or the readership, and it's very hard to zero in on the market's needs if you don't start with a baseline of respect.
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I have made other threads appealing to them to please stop this behavior, because it really freaks me out. I block as many as I can. But they bring new people into their group, and those people will tag me. It's clearly become a really disturbing game.
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If you’re a young writer who’s interested in getting paid to play and develop in other people’s worlds, I highly recommend looking into the IP side of publishing. It can be incredibly rewarding and open your original work up to new audiences. Also you get paid.
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The "let's turn books into N*FTs" thing is wild because the idea of not owning your copyright is pitched as this amazing thing and that makes no sense.
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Ok, I’ve gotta say it: fantasizing about service jobs you think are cute and more easy than your PHD’s and joking about dropping out to run a bakery like it’s something anyone can do is really annoying to the people who have actually made a living doing those ‘cute’ service jobs.
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Class, spousal support and generational wealth are three things we really avoid talking about in publishing because it flies in the face of the ‘progressive’ sheen that the author and industry side of publishing likes to draw over itself.
do you ever think about the fact that any conversation about fair pay for writers is hamstrung by the fact that so many writers are financially supported by their partners but don't mention it
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Two taps on the window. He was just trying to say "hi" because he wanted me to look at the bird outside because as someone who's pretty bedridden, I LOVE looking at the birds. And I'm on the floor, choking. Because PTSD is not rational.
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I am begging novelists to stop falling into the silly hole of ‘let’s write an article about how my novel is not like Those Other Romance Girls and hey maybe Romance doesn’t need a HEA.’
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The four payment system turns a publisher into not a publisher, but an interest gathering operation. Essentially, they get to sit on our money for 2-4 years and earning interest on it while also making money from the product they have not fully paid for. That is bullshit.
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Publishing is, what, a 25+ billion dollar business?
Where are their lobbyists? Where are the bills countering this? Where are the slick ad campaigns talking about why book banning is bad?
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CW: PTSD REACTION
The first time my partner accidentally triggered my PTSD, all he did was tap on the window from outside. But I hadn't realized he'd GONE outside. Two taps. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't talk. My legs gave out & I just fell on the floor & choked on my tongue.
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Just imagine a giant neon sign above every publisher's roof: NO POORS. NO MARGINALIZED PEOPLE. IF WE DEIGN TO LET YOU IN, YOU SHUT UP. BE GRATEFUL.
That is what the system is designed for. And this is who the move to the four payment system is designed to keep out.
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Oh, I'm interested in this: writers, is there a scene in your work you write towards? Like, the scene that dogs you throughout the drafting, the one you always go back to once you write it, the one you're always thinking of before you finally get to it?
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Just a heads up, y'all: if a publisher is saying stuff like this and your work is fiction, it's a red flag.
Non-fiction sometimes does want/require am established platform. But there's no reason for anyone publishing fiction to have this requirement.
A publisher told me they wouldnt be okay with publishing my book unless I had a large twitter following.I felt safe enough and said I'm almost at 10K on Twitter.Turns out 50K followers was the number they had in mind. What is a large number of followers for you?
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Writing to market like that is hard! This writer is clearly a talented gem to be able to write to market and crash books like that and her boyfriend should be like "Wow! This is an amazing skill and talent you've developed! Let me make the meals during your writing marathon?"
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And the reason I keep trying to appeal to any empathy within y'all who keep doing this is because I was so fucked up at 15 and 16 and 17 and most of my anger/pain was directed at myself. And holy shit, did I do damage to myself that's still written all over my body.
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Where's our viral PSA about book banning? Where's the hotline authors can call into if their book's banned with information on how to fight it?
They won't stop. This is not a blip. Shake yourselves out of your damn New York bubble, my god, they want 10K bounties on librarians.
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So for everyone who's like "But I want to be a full time writer and it seems like an impossible disaster ahhh!" let's talk about how people without partners/parental support do make it work. Any full time writers who are the breadwinners want to chime in?
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Jennifer Crusie for dialogue, Alyssa Cole for characters, chemistry and clever situations that make you want to squee, Beverly Jenkins for you know, EVERYTHING and I've learned a LOT through the years about Romance from my dear
@_ElizabethMay
who is Katrina Kendrick.
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Let's talk red flags in publishing. Because I really dislike when bad actors make us suspicious of all small presses, because lots of small presses are amazing!
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We're at the end of the year, writers! Tell me about your plans and dreams and projects for next year! Remember: "surviving" is a very good answer always, but especially now.
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I have tried to keep my teen self in mind when dealing with this situation. But it continues to grow and become more disturbing and toxic and the damage I'm most concerned with is this toxic response to PTSD and boundaries happening, because queer people often have PTSD.
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I sold a book in 2021 that I will not see the final payment for until 2024. My publisher gets 3.5 years of interest off of a chunk of my advance while also earning money off the product I created for them and withholding payment far long after I've completed the job.
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Also, I think this every time I write these threads but never say it: having an industry where one of the pre-reqs is utter financial reliance on a partner can create a very easy-in for financial control and other abuse.
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I can't believe I have to say this but, White Publishing People: the police, in no way, are your helpers when it comes to protest. Looting is part of protest. If you call the cops on looting activity, you've made the judgement that you're OK with looters possibly being murdered.
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I've been seeing some stuff lately about how GoodReads "want to read" adds are really important in the grand publishing scheme of things and I have to admit, this is not my experience, but I thought I'd do a thread about the things that HAVE moved the needle w/ each book.
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Despite what my Macbook keeps telling me, it IS Monday which means it's my last oatmeal thread of the year! Today I'm going to break down the tools I used in 2021 to write the 8 books I wrote this year.
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Again: genuine question. Literary Fiction is such a different animal, I'm wondering if this is how it's taught because it was talked about like it was so normal? Are you taught to mimic others first?
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And now this situation has made my decision for me. I will not sell the film subrights. And I will write it into my author's estate that those subrights cannot be sold after my death.
This is what happens when you mess with the IP holder.
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Laekan was incredibly classy and did not mention what bookstore it was until the owner came into the mentions, calling attention to herself and her store. Quite honestly, if the owner hadn't done that, this wouldn't have happened.
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I think a lot about why male writers feel so comfortable writing about the sexual assault of women and girls.
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