Cyndy Aleo's Blog

Dreams for girls

This election is causing me a lot of anxiety, and I'm not alone in that. And the one thing that's making me the most anxious is that it's causing so many people to share their personal values, and I had no idea how many people around me in my life are sexist or racist or classist or homophobic. Those things were so nicely hidden in polite society other than the occasional comment, right?

I apparently do not espouse the values of a lot of people who surround me. And that is anxiety-producing in even the tiniest of ways.

Yesterday, I had a disagreement with someone over a picture they thought was touching: a flower girl staring at the bride's wedding dress hanging with one of those captions like "someday..." blah, blah.

Do we take pictures like that of little boys in weddings staring at tuxedos? I've never seen one, but the flower girl one is a photo I've seen countless times. Why do we encourage our girls to dream of being princesses and brides? And am I a failure for not being married?

I have a lot of friends who never married... maybe more than most. A lot of days, as I'm working my near-minimum-wage job then driving my 11-year-old minivan for all the kid activities, I'm jealous of them. They can take trips on a moment's notice. They're beholden to no one. Yet I wonder if our insane focus on women being brides and wives and mothers makes them feel like they've missed something, that they are failures in the eyes of our society.

It's always women at the center of these conversations: how do you work and have children? When do you plan to get married? Where are the conversations on the other side? Where are the people asking how men balance family and career? Why is the pressure on us? Why is there such an emphasis on the school dances with amazing dresses and weddings with dresses that cost hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars while men show up in a rented suit? Why are women supposed to focus on everything but bettering ourselves and our OWN situations?

I've hit the time of year where I'm already stressed and exhausted: two kids on different football teams often going in opposite directions, two kids dancing on different days, one teen working with hours that often conflict with mine. And then you add things like people saying it would be great if women didn't vote so their candidate could win and my ex commenting how exhausting his one day of driving our kids in 400 directions on one of his two weekends with them a month is going to be and I just think I'd much rather see a picture of a flower girl looking at a space suit or a Bunsen burner or Sandra Day O'Connor's judicial robes or a woman in a suit running for President of the United States.

What's your most embarrassing job ever?

I have a friend -- some of you know who she is -- who is an amazing storyteller, both orally and as an author. One of her stories (actually a couple of her stories) dovetail into a phrase I've assigned as her catchphrase: "And THAT'S how I ended up working as a topless waitress."

Had you told me seven-ish years ago when I met her online that I'd end up being friends with her, I'd probably have gaped at you. She's a Midwesterner and proud of it. I'm an East Coast city girl who's struggled my entire adult life merely with living in the suburbs and having less access to public transit. I grew up solidly middle class. She sure as hell did not.

We ended up bonding initially over the often horrifying economic ramifications of a divorce, and discovered our shared esoteric employment history that doesn't really lend itself well to resume building. It does make for an entertaining author bio, however.

But it's funny; she never once mentions that short-lived topless waitress gig with any sort of embarrassment. I found myself skipping my college homecoming last weekend -- which I'd really, really wanted to attend -- because in the face of former classmates who've gone on to become things with titles like "vice president and general counsel" I didn't feel up to saying "freelancer when I get gigs and icing things in a bakery."

Yet my bakery job overall doesn't embarrass me. It puts food on the table and keeps my head -- or at least my face if I tip my head back -- above water. Most of my former jobs don't embarrass me, well, anymore than things like taking a job I knew was going to be a terrible fit just because I needed the job, or being the first on the chopping block during a RIF because I was unable to play corporate politics (something I've never learned to do) or deal with rampant stupidity that costs the company money (see above).

But it's gotten me thinking about what job I most regret. Would it be the one I took with an obviously sinking company where the hiring manager obviously settled on me as the second choice after the first choice refused the position and then intentionally undermined me looking for grounds for dismissal? The fast food job in high school?

No, there's only one I really regret: celebrity gossip blogger.

This was in the height of the Perez Hilton era, when everyone was hoping to get on that money train. The guy I was ghostwriting for was a super-nice guy with some great social media chops. And it looked like easy money; all I had to do was find and regurgitate news items in a snarky way. I pretty much do that anyway, right?

Wrong.

I have a friend who's asked why I've never mined it for a story, made it funny, made it parody. It's because it's not funny, and I feel a lot of remorse that in whatever small way I played into the creation of this takedown culture, where we worship celebrities until we grow tired of them and then jump on the nearest pile-on to denigrate them, where we know the names of all the Kardashians (spoiler, I actually don't, just the two loudest ones) but can't tell a reporter on the street where Aleppo is.

I stayed with that outlet until it folded because I needed the money, badly. But I can also tell you about the day Anna Nicole Smith died and I had to spend the day hunting everywhere for body bag photos. About how I alternately cried and vomited all day that this was what was passing for news, that this was what people find worthy of attention. Where I once watched award shows and got paid to do it, now I avoid things like paparazzi photos of celebrities like they're my worst nightmare.

So yes, I work at a bakery to supplement my meager freelance income. I wear a uniform and a name tag and I mostly frost cakes and bake pies and provide customer service for people who sometimes treat me like something they've scraped off the bottom of a shoe. But I've never, not once, applied for another job in celebrity news. 

White privilege and cleaning up our own backyards

This morning I saw a tweet and I was pretty sure that it was about a book I'd not only read, but thought was excellent. I didn't review it, because I don't, as a rule, review friends' books, and the friend is a close enough friend that if I'd thought it was inappropriate I'd absolutely have said "This is trash."

But what's interesting is that the book -- which isn't genre, wasn't positioned as genre, wasn't marketed or sold or even conceived as romance -- was being judged by those standards, even when some of those involved in the discussion noted that.

And I wondered... have I been the person who gets lured into these "HOW DARE THEY?!" mentalities without looking any further?

Any trade review of the book notes that it's a dark story, that it reflects the all-too-common reality of people outside of most people's experiences. What amused me the most is that many of those in the conversation are regular proponents of diversity in books, particularly romance. 

I am the first person to tell you there is no place for some things in romance: a Nazi concentration camp setting where the hero is a Nazi, for instance. There is no writer on earth who can make that palatable. But one of the things about literary (and upmarket and non-genre and even genre) fiction is that it can be a mirror, especially to things we are unwilling to look at in our own society.

Had any of the people in question actually read the book, or talked to anyone who had, or asked anyone who had, or read trade reviews of the book, they'd have seen that it does just that. While we are able to focus on "big" news and "big" issues, things we forget:

As of 2011 data, approximately 20 percent of children in the U.S. are living in poverty. One out of five children. One. In. Five. (Data point: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/by-the-numbers-childhood-poverty-in-the-u-s/). Those aren't all black or brown children, but the rates are definitely higher for those population. Still, according to the 2010 census data, there are over a half million white children in this country who are below the poverty line.

One of the issues that I find in examining how we react to issues is coming from our own privilege. Even with the most concerned white people who are looking at things like the ongoing police issues in this country and the Black Lives Matter movement, we are Othering. "It's terrible, and thank god it could never happen to me because I'm white/middle class/cishet." Meanwhile, we are unwilling/unable to see or clean up what's in our own backyard. Not all of those single-parent households below the poverty line are non-white. A lot of those kids growing up with no options, no safety net, who'll end up at the wrong end of a police interaction or parent interaction or drug dealer interaction are just. like. us.

Only not.

And I find myself wondering how many times I've done this. How many times I've made judgements based on my own privilege growing up. My kids and I are lucky in that we do have a house and a car that runs and groceries and are able to hang on by fingernails in a good school district. At the same time, all the free lunch kids know the other free lunch kids, and my kids came out of the elementary school with the highest percentage of kids under the poverty line in the district. They're the "bad influences" and the ones the other parents encourage their kids not to talk to. We often find it easier to spot the families where maybe drugs are a commonplace appearance in homes, or there's an abusive parent.

I wrote about it before -- probably on a blog that's now gone -- but one of my kid's former classmates was murdered by her non-custodial father, along with her half-sister. It brought the "Othering" home for me: These aren't kids in the news or in backwoods quasi-towns in a rural area far from me. These are kids who sat next to my kids in class, who stand in line for free breakfast, who may have been mean to my kids because their experiences weren't necessarily heavy on the kindness. My experiences growing up are not those of these kids. My experiences growing up are not even those of my kids, who struggle more than a lot of other kids do, and yet I still remind are privileged in a lot of respects.

So I'm hoping that when I look at writing that's reflecting that reality back to me, I'm trying to be a little more empathetic. A little more "When everything is the worst, what is the best case scenario for a kid/person like this?" Not all fiction is fantasy. Not all situations can be judged by the moral compass that privilege brings us.

It's been a little over five years since that little girl and her sister were killed. And having read and been moved by the book these folks on Twitter were so outraged by, I can tell you that if I were able to put that little girl into that book, to make her that character, to give her the inappropriate and morally reprehensible plot line so that her life did not end at the end of her father's gun in a tent in the woods after he'd taken her and her sister from their grandmother, I would do it in a heartbeat, without question.

There are a lot of days when I miss the blind privilege I once existed in. At the same time, I'm forced to regularly examine my own biases, my own reactions, every single time. Our country has a legacy of pretending everything is great; it's fantastic; we're the best place on earth, while distancing ourselves from the things that aren't so great. Maybe the solution for everything that's wrong is to work on that distancing, starting with how our own country is being uncomfortably being reflected back to us by authors and artists and protestors.

Buy This Book!

tl;dr: Right now, I want you to go and buy this book. I'll wait here with the rest of this post while you do.

The Dirty Secret by Kira A. Gold

So once upon a time, as we all know by now, I wrote Twilight fan fiction. And there were authors you hung out with online and then there were authors you were pretty much sure were way cooler than you were and you weren't quite sure what the hell they were doing writing fan fiction. One of those authors was in.a.blue.bathrobe.

She was mysterious, and she wrote this fic using that completely tired trope where two people meet in two different ways -- in this case online and then in person -- and don't recognize each other until the climactic scene.

Mention two words to any Twilight fic fan who was around in 2009, and they will go nuts for you, "Hello, Spark."

Beyond the fervor over this fic, I was totally in love with it, because the author clearly got music in that way so few people do, and most of whom I manage to make friends with when I meet them. 

Then a couple of years ago, I get this email asking me if I can edit a book. It's that author, and she wants me to edit.

I may have needed a lie-down.

I've edited a few things for her: that first YA book, a novella... and then she reserved a spot for me for this Shakespeare retelling, and as the date was approaching for her slot, I get this cryptic email that went something like this: "Hey, the Shakespeare thing is killing me but I have this other thing I just had to get down and it's really rough but would you mind taking it anyway in that slot that I held?"

That "really rough" thing was what is coming out today as The Dirty Secret. Obviously, I can't ethically review it because Kira is a client, but I can tell you about it and all the reasons you need to buy this right now.

First: You all know I've read a lot of erotic romance. A. Lot. And I'm going to admit to you now that I got a little tired of reading it. There are only so many times you can read people having sex before it gets a little old-news. I'd often find myself skimming the sex scenes and reading the plot. I know. Defeats the purpose, right?

And the blurb here tells you just about nothing about why this book is so amazing. Yes, it's erotic romance. Yes, there is sex in here, and a lot of it. But Kira has a style of writing that's so unusual I think it defies cramming into a block of text on the back of a book. When I sent the edits back to her for this one, I believe I told her it was like moving into a Baz Luhrman film. If you've seen Moulin Rouge (or Romeo+Juliet or pretty much anything), you'll know what I mean: that rich, sensual background that transports you outside your own world.

If you are looking for erotic romance that is PWP (porn without plot), this isn't your book. There are lush descriptions of interior design and art. I've been reading the reviews for this one, and I think there are some folks who want that and only that, and that's totally okay. But that's not what this book is.

It's unique and it's sensual and the sex is somehow unlike the other stuff, and I can admit to you that when I was editing this book I had to take a break at times.

This is the book that landed Kira her agent. That got her a publishing deal. And that went on to get a Publisher's Weekly starred review (no easy feat).

I can't tell you enough good things about it, but I can tell you that when I finished my edit, I wanted to live in it.

I can also tell you that this is a series and the series GETS BETTER. I've already seen a draft of the next one, and I am a bona fide addict. You need to read this book. Go buy it.

Amazon
Barnes & Noble
iTunes
Kobo

Things no one will probably say about the Twilight gender-swap

I know I'm supposed to tread carefully, as I work in publishing, but I'm sort of tired already of the Beyonce Book Drop. I was tired of it the first time and I'm even more tired of it now.

There are a lot of authors singing hosannahs to "What Stephenie Meyer has done for YA," but the reality is, this move wasn't about her fans, and it sure wasn't about YA books.

As I work in publishing -- and have on one side of the fence or the other for several years -- I can tell you how much work and planning goes into a book launch. It's months of planning and editing and putting together advertising and marketing plans and soliciting early reviews. It's like setting up a domino run of millions of dominoes and hoping no one knocks one over while you're setting them up.

It's coincidental that I have friends with a YA book out today, because that's not even the real book that's getting crushed today. There are certain books you know are going to be huge before they even come out: anything by John Green. Julie Murphy's Dumplin' (which I did actually preorder, devour, and love. Today should have been all about Rainbow Rowell's Carry On, an adorkably meta fan-fiction of her own book (technically speaking... if I described the various levels of fandom interplay involved in the creation and publication of Carry On, I'd lose all two of you who are going to read this post).

So you have a book that came out of a book where the heroine was a BNA (big-name author in fandom terms). And then you have an author with one of the largest fandoms on earth surprise everyone with A FANFIC OF HER OWN BOOK. REALLY?

Let's call it what it is: a self-serving cash grab. Twilight fans have waited for the completion of Midnight Sun. Fans of The Host have waited for what was supposed to be a continuation of a trilogy. And yet every last book that was planned for today has been overshadowed with an author writing a gender swap of her own work.

 

Please. Fandom already did this, several times over.

My favorite? Gate Light. A gender swap crackfic with cyborgs and a whole host of crazy (and very little canon).

The first I saw? Twilight Reversed. Back in 2008.

This isn't innovative. As a fan, it's not particularly exciting. It's definitely not what the fandom had hoped for. And it manages to crap on months of work by publishing people in support of other books.

So please don't tell me how amazing this is and how it makes me a bad fan to actually loathe this book, this move, and right now? This author. Because I know how hard these people work behind the scenes, and it bugs the hell out of me to see these stunts.

(Also, because Beyonce is Our Queen, notice that she didn't schedule stealth media moves for giant announcements on the perfect New Release Tuesday for maxxing out NYT juju. If this was about the fans? S. Meyer'd have done this yesterday. Or better yet, Sunday.)

Lessons Learned: Publishing a Serial

When I first started writing The Forest's Son, I was still writing a lot of fan fiction. And as the story progressed, it felt much more like the serialization of writing fanfic than it did a single novel. Each part had a logical cut-off point that was more than a chapter ending. The entire draft in Scrivener was set up in sections, with shorter chapters in each of them. 

When I decided to publish it, it made sense to me to publish it exactly the way it was written. It was a five-part serial.

My problem? I tried to make everyone happy.

I had a lot of people (okay, several people) ask me if I would put it out as one title later on. And for paperback purposes, that makes more sense. So I did.

But then it became confusing, still having the serialization out there with the compilation. So I took the serialized titles down, and now have a title on Amazon with zero reviews.

Wow, I am a mess, and I should have known better.

So let me tell you all the places I screwed this one up, and hopefully it will help someone else in the future.

1. Don't try to make other people happy.

Seriously, I know better than this. The story was a serial, and I should have left it that way, the hell with what other people said. I'm not in this to sell a bazillion copies, or I'd be writing stuff other than what I write. I should have stuck to my guns and said "No, this is a serial."

2. Don't rely on Amazon to do things right.

What a lot of people won't say is that Amazon is a damn disaster on the technical end. I'd upload the titles and try to set the sale dates, and of the five serial parts? I had issues with 4/5. And the 5th? That one Amazon released early.

KDP is not a seamless experience, and anyone who tells you it is is lying. Worst of all, Amazon is pretty much useless when it comes to customer support when things go pear-shaped. I ended up having to delete and repost some of the parts. My KDP dash is a mess as a result, because once something has "been published" even if it never showed up with a buy link? They consider it published, and you can't delete it.

Amazon has also made it a PITA to make something free. That's bothersome.

If I ever did this again? I might sell it directly. Or use Smashwords. Or anything other than KDP, so Amazon, take note.

3. People outside of Romancelandia (and specifically, it seems, the Erotica Neighborhood) do not understand serials.

This part astounds me, but it seems like the general public does not understand how serials work. I mean, DICKENS wrote his novels as serializations. How is this still so confusing?

When I set up the pricing, I did so in a way that BUYING IT AS A SERIAL WAS CHEAPER THAN BUYING IT AS A SINGLE BOOK. I really wanted people to read it the way I intended. But there appeared to be a mentality that it was somehow MORE to buy it as a serial, and I have no idea how I could have made that more easily understood. Maybe I should have made the single title $9.99 USD? ;)

Case Study: Every Possible Way You Can Go Wrong As a Self-Published Author

If someone asked me to write a parody email said to be from a self-published author, I could not have done it this well.

Sad thing? This isn't a parody.

This email was posted to Twitter this morning, and the reviewer in question was kind enough to remove the identifying details. As a former pro reviewer and self-published author myself? I would never have been so kind.

I'm preaching to the choir in all likelihood, but if you have stumbled upon this post and are wondering what is so bad about this email, let me spell it out for you:

"You are on my list to receive..."
Where did this list come from? Have these books been solicited, or are you spamming people? Ordinarily, I'd give someone the benefit of the doubt, but in this case, once you continue on, I think we all know what's happening here.

NB: Never, ever, ever send unsolicited anything. And definitely not attachments. Never sign someone up for your newsletter or Facebook group or anything. Opt-in should be your default, not opt-out.

"in exchange for a positive review"
No. NONONONONONONO. Never. Never ever. Not in any instance. What you are trying to do here is buy reviews and that is NEVER OKAY. (Sorry, but I'll be using all caps a lot in this post, I fear.)

If you really consider yourself an author, that means accepting, and in fact, welcoming, criticism. You hope for constructive criticism, but you accept what you get. It's part of being a professional. If you want only positive reviews, keep it in your diary or give it to your mom only. Never tell people what to think. And you don't send them a book with an EXPECTATION of anything. You HOPE you will get an honest review. That is all. Shoot, I sent books OVERSEAS for a Goodreads giveaway. Ask me if any of those folks reviewed the book they entered to win? It's called promotion, not bribery.

"1-3 stars really hurt the indie author"
Stop this. Seriously. Stop it now. If I see a self-published book (and no, I will never accept the term "indie" as that is for independent presses) with nothing but 4- and 5-star reviews? I assume that each and every review is a family member or bought on Fiverr. THE CRITICAL REVIEWS ARE WHAT SMART PEOPLE LOOK FOR.

See, I don't trust hoi polloi reviewers. There. I said it. I trust people who HAVE THE SAME TASTE IN BOOKS THAT I DO. If I see a 1-star review that says "plot was good, but there was way too much filthy sex in it" then I AM CLICKING THAT BUY WITH 1-CLICK BUTTON like this:

I need to know what people didn't like. Sometimes what they don't like is what I DO like. I'm definitely not spending what little money I have on a book that has no negative reviews, because that tells me no one has actually read it outside friends and family. And probably has paid reviews. Don't want less than 4 stars? Again, keep it in your diary.

"Promotional sites will remove the author"
I assume you are talking about sites like Bookbub, etc. And this is false. Totally false. Do some research.

Sites like this are looking for an overall positive rating (which in the industry is 3+ stars, but again, RESEARCH), but what they are mostly looking for is that a fair number of genuine, bona fide human beings have bought the book and enjoyed it. You aren't getting that with this promo method you're using. Not even close.

"please DO NOT write things like 'I received this book...'"
This is the point where I completely lost my shit and started throwing things.

YOU ARE ASKING PEOPLE TO BE UNETHICAL AND IGNORE FTC REGULATIONS ABOUT TRUTH IN ADVERTISING.

Since this author is too damn lazy to even look up WHY reviewers make these statements, LET ME GOOGLE THAT FOR YOU.

To quote a former editor of mine: "You lazy, incurious fuck."

Having been a reviewer prior to these regs, and after as well, THEY ARE IMPORTANT. It's WHY Amazon notes Verified Purchase on reviews, as well. Just... I have no words for this level of stupid. NO WORDS.

Reviewers, if an "author" asks you to do this? You have one response. Delete the email and never acknowledge their presence on the planet again. This is absolutely the most asinine thing I've ever seen. It's like there's a competition for being wrong on the Internet this month, and this person is determined to win it.

I think, based on that statement, there's a trophy heading their way.

"your ebook will be attached in another file later today or tomorrow"
This... honestly. It's the cherry on this shit sundae. Now you are spamming people TWICE for ONE BOOK. OMG. HOW EVEN DO YOU MANAGE TO BRUSH YOUR TEETH WITHOUT CHOKING YOURSELF?

I am actually finishing up this post praying that this will later be revealed to be a hoax and I will have been played mightily, and at that point I will applaud and recommend this individual to any editor I know as a gifted satirist.

But the sad reality is that this level of complete and utter disregard for educating yourself on craft, on the industry, on pesky things like laws and how to operate in the marketplace is WHY so many reviewers refuse to review any self-published titles. This type of person is why *I* can't get people to review my books, even by reviewers I've worked with in a professional capacity.

And that makes me want to put my foot right up their asses.

Reviewing is a privilege...

Funny, I usually start that sentence out with the word "Spandex" and not "reviewing," but coming out on the other side of it, I have a really different perspective of what it means to be a reviewer of things.

When I first quit my programming job to stay home with my first child, I was absolutely at a loss. I'd been working since I was 14 years old, and while I wanted to be with my kid more than anything, I felt absolutely useless not bringing money in.

And the first thing I did when I decided to start writing was join a site called Epinions.

Most of you probably have never heard of it, but if it wasn't for Epinions, you wouldn't have all those nifty product reviews on web sites like Amazon. Epinions was bought out by -- and subsequently sunk massively -- by eBay, but in 1999? It was cutting-edge. And we made decent money.

I made friends there that I still have now all this time later, but the best thing about it was that there was a community, and every single person there wanted you to be better at reviewing. We reviewed everything that wasn't nailed down (and some things that were), but we did it with the mindset that we were providing a valuable service. When I was pregnant in 1999, I had no idea which car seat was better than any other one, and there weren't a lot of places to find out.

By the time the site closed, I had written over 1200 reviews; my reviews had seen well over a million hits; and I was ranked in the top 50 or top 100 reviewers of all-time on the site. During my time reviewing, I received a ton of free stuff, ranging from small cleaning items to a multi-function printer and car seats.

I never got rich doing it, but I made a decent amount of money over the years, and it led me to the three years I spent reviewing for RT Book Reviews.

Here's what I learned, however, and whether you're starting out with a review blog or contributing to a site where you bought your product, they're helpful to keep in mind:

1. You aren't reviewing for you. You are reviewing for other people.

That's a big one. There have been times when the product absolutely wasn't right for me, but I could see how other people would like it. And the opposite can also be true: I might love something, but other people might be put off by it. There are very few things in this world that are all good or all bad, and part of being a great reviewer is being able to see more than just your perspective.

2. No one owes you anything. Ever.

I don't care how famous you are, or how many hits your blog gets, or what your review ranking is on Vine. No one owes you a thing. Yes, a great review can help a product sell better, but in the end, you are one person, and there is a line behind you of people who want free stuff. Everyone wants something for free. You may get a bump in line because you are performing a service, but that doesn't mean it's what you deserve.

The worst example I ever saw of this was while at Epinions. One year instead of holiday bonuses, we got high-end items to review. A printer -- that at the time retailed for $250 -- showed up at my door unexpectedly. There were a lot of people who complained about what they got, but I GOT A FREE $250 PRINTER. How do you complain about that? Problem was, the complainers were louder, and that was the only year that happened.

Moral: Don't be that person and ruin it for everyone. You learned to say thank you even if you didn't like something back in kindergarten. Make your mama proud.

3. Reviewing is a mutually beneficial relationship. Remember that.

There seems to be a mentality that reviewing is a one-way street, but it isn't. Sure, the company whose product you are reviewing gets free publicity, but you are also getting free stuff AND ADDING TO YOUR OWN VISIBILITY. Think about it: the book blogs that have the most traffic are the ones that get the biggest authors, right?

To get those big books, those bloggers had to start somewhere. To get better products, reviewers like Vine reviewers had to start somewhere as well. And as reviewing has gotten bigger, the pool of reviewers has gotten bigger as well. If a company handed out a free item to every single person who asked, guess what? There'd be nothing to sell, and they'd go out of business.

Reviewers have always been chosen based on how much they can help the company. That's all there is to it. What kind of platform do you have? How many followers do you have? How many people are reading your reviews? How valuable is your review?

And remember: no one owes anyone anything. I have multiple friends who are NYT bestselling authors. I buy their books like anyone else off the street. They don't owe me free books or ARCs just because we are friends. Why would they? This is a business, like any other, and they have to make a living. And if friends don't owe friends books, why on earth would they owe them to anyone with a hand out?

If I happen to get an ARC or a signed copy? I am immensely grateful. And it's a pleasant surprise, not something I would ever expect. (And 9 times out of 10, I buy the book anyway. And I bought a copy of every book I loved so much I want to read again. Because authors need money, too.)

4. Assess your platform

Your reviews have to provide value, or there's no point in doing them. If you 5-star everything? Potential customers aren't going to trust that you know what they'll like. There's a reason that big-deal publications are the ones that get their reviews on the covers of books or on the product packaging: Customers have learned that they can be trusted. Those places have established that they're unbiased, critical, and, as a result, have built a large audience.

5. BE. POLITE.

A few years ago, it was a newsworthy event to see someone go off the rails. Now, it's an occurrence I see multiple times a day. The internet these days seems to be a rage-involved culture, and people seem to react with knee-jerk reactions.

And I get it! I really do. It SUCKS getting denied when you apply to review something. Even a publication like RT -- which has been around for years and has established itself as an industry leader -- has some titles they can't get their hands on as ARCs. It could be that the budget for a publisher wasn't large enough to hit all the outlets. It could be that the release schedule was running behind and galleys weren't going to be available in time for print. It could be that there's a fear that reviews won't be good, and any pre-publicity will hurt sales. Or it could just be that so many people were clamoring for a title that they reached their allotment.

It happens to everyone. And it can feel like a personal rejection. I got spoiled getting ARCs for so long, and I hate waiting for release day to read books I'm anticipating. Shoot, even when I WAS reviewing, I couldn't get my hands on ARCs all the time. (Case in point, Erika Swyler's THE BOOK OF SPECULATION, which is magnificent). Guess what I did?

Nothing. I didn't bitch out a publicist for rejecting me. I didn't have a tantrum. I didn't take to social media to shout "HOW DARE YOU IGNORE ME! DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY BOOKS MY PULL QUOTES ARE ON THE COVERS OF?"

I waited until the book came out, and I bought a copy, and I read it just like everyone else. And then I posted a review on Goodreads, and keep telling people about it.

See, the thing is, I think a lot of times people lose sight of the entire purpose of reviewing, which is to help other people. You want to tell them when something is so amazing they should go right ahead and spend their hard-earned money on it. And you want to tell them to save their money when something is terrible.

Reviewing isn't about the reviewer and the reviewer's ego. It's about everyone else but the reviewer. And any good reviewer will keep that in mind. Always.

Reviews vs. Awards vs. Censorship

Please note this blog post is me speaking for MYSELF, and not any current or past employer.

The flap about that book I shall not give more of a platform to is more than what's being talked about on Twitter, more than what even most romance readers seem to understand, and talking about it in 140-character increments is exhausting because so many pieces are getting lost.

The book in question is controversial. It's controversial in that it uses conversion as a plot point, which appears to be anti-Semitic in nature (the heroine's arc is completed in that she is saved by love and conversion when so many other Jews perished). It's controversial in that it is part of a genre that has been artificially narrowed -- by publishers, by readers, but authors -- to include spirituality only in the context of evangelical Christianity. it's controversial in that it uses a trope that denies consent to the heroine -- no matter how you look at it, you cannot consent to a relationship when the other person holds all the power over whether you live or die.

Where things are getting lost is in who praised the book, who gave the book a platform, who would be accused of censorship.

Censorship is not being allowed an avenue to express yourself. No one is advocating burning this book, or denying the author her right to have written the book. As I noted on Twitter, I was once in a writing challenge with an author who was writing a fic with this exact plotline, and there was a heated argument between us on the issue of consent. I checked this morning, and found several examples -- many unfinished -- of Twilight fan fiction where Edward was the Nazi officer/commander/solder and Bella was the Jew in the camp/heading to the camp/being saved from the camp.

I'm not telling those authors -- or those who read these stories -- that they have no right to read them. But I find it problematic when a SYSTEM rewards these stories with a giant platform.

Let's face it; books with dubious consent issues are currently popular. Those of us who tried to campaign against 50 Shades (or in its fanfic form, Master of the Universe) pointed out that it was at best "dubcon" which is fandomese for "a story where the consent is dubious at best." The general public lapped it up, and obviously didn't care about the consent issues.

At the time, however, one of the organizations that made this book a finalist for an award said no pulled to publish fan fiction was eligible.

And we nodded along. We get it. It's a controversial subject and we might not like singling out some works, but they did.

Now, what is it, five years later? The word censorship is used. Why now? Why when it was okay to say "These works are not okay by us" does it become censorship with the community at large is questioning it?

Note that there were reviewers who gave this book glowing recommendations, but they were single readers. There was no panel discussion, and the one thing you know about privilege is that some people don't see it. I'm not saying it's right that they didn't, but I understand it. There are reviewers who saw good writing and didn't perceive the plot in all the ways it was problematic.

That is the biggest problem in the industry. We can call for diverse books and diverse authors and diverse readers, but the issue is bigger than one book. As a reviewer, I requested the diverse books, and when I wasn't sure about a plot or the way a character was being portrayed, I would often ask friends, "Am I wrong to find this offensive? Is this the author showing reality or an author showing bias?"

But I'm old and I'm super-liberal and I've been around this block. And when we aren't teaching people -- from reviewers to interns to assistants to acquiring editors to amateur reviewers what is problematic, we are really all to blame.

I'm not a member of the organization in question. I have never been a fan of its principles, of its laissez-faire approach to dealing with controversy, and I'm too tired to want to affect change from the inside. So I don't give them my money and I generally ignore them, but most people will tell you this isn't an isolated incident.

It isn't censorship to say "We want to reward authors who approach diversity with sensitivity." It isn't wrong to add guidelines saying works with dubious consent issues  wouldn't be eligible for the platform given to them by becoming an award finalist. It is, however, horrifying that authors are given books to review -- from their peers -- with no idea and no guidelines about how to review them critically, with an eye to a book's overall impact other than "Yeah, this is good. Here's my rating scale."

But until we as an entire industry -- from assistants and reviewers to CEOs and acquisitions -- start to look at intersectionality in everything we do? And establish guidelines -- for reviewing, for awards, for publishing -- that instruct people to be aware of content and how marginalized populations may be treated by the content? This one book is the tip of a very big iceberg that's still not visible above the surface.

 

Hiatus

So I wrote last time about what it's like being me.

What I didn't include was the craziness of the past several years.

I've been freelancing now for over 15 years, but when I started out, it was as a stay-at-home mom who'd left programming and was going a little stir-crazy not bringing any money in. I'd never intended it to be full-time. Then when I divorced, I was lucky enough to land a full-time job fairly quickly, but let my regular freelance clients go one by one as working full-time and being a single mom on top of it wasn't leaving much room.

When my position was eliminated, it was a huge, huge struggle for several years. I was fortunate that I had family to help, but it's super-hard to build up a full-time freelance business in this market. It's hard to convince clients you're worth the money when there are people who don't do it for a living who undercharge. And I couldn't rely on family to bail me out forever.

So I made the decision to take a part-time job, and I applied for years -- literally. And then I finally got one, but the idea I had in my head of 20 hours a week was hilarious. It's odd hours and exhausting work, and when I added that on to my existing part-time marketing job and freelance and being a mom... something had to give.

Some of you may know I'm also a volunteer on the Communications committee at OTW. I'm on hiatus there. And, unfortunately, I need to take a break from taking on any new clients as well. If you're reading this and you're an existing client, have no fears. I have made room in my schedule. I'm familiar with your style. I know when your stuff is heading my way (roughly).

But the amount of time and energy it takes to onboard new clients, to become familiar with their idiosyncrasies and writing styles and editing preferences is more than I have right now. I'm trying valiantly to give my kids time and attention and do my best at both my jobs, and while I've actually left myself calendar notifications to not take on so much work around the holidays, I missed that memo here. I need to give myself a break. I need to give my kids a present mom, even when I'm working 50+ hours a week and trying to fit things in around that.

So you won't see me as much on social media. I won't be taking on any new clients right now. I'm taking a break from volunteering. I'm putting my writing on hold. I'm on... hiatus.

Thanks for understanding! I hope that once I get a few more months of "new job anxiety" out of my system, I'll be able to open to new clients again.