Historical Notes and Content Warnings

A couple of my future works will be featuring a historical note. A horror fantasy work that references the Tulsa Massacre and an alternate history fantasy that references, well, the world’s historical events.

These notes are because, welp, they’re history notes. It’s important to point out “hey, this thing actually happened, educate yourself if you want to know more”.

As for content warnings, I’m happy with how they look in my works and I also plan to add sample previews files of my works on my Published Works page so any work with a content warning page will be present, front and center as it naturally occurs in the book. The titles still will be underlined on the Published Works page if they have a content warning in the book as a visual cue. I will probably (most likely) add the actual content warnings at the bottom of the blurbs so someone doesn’t have to download a file just to find out they can’t read it.

Speaking as someone who has severe trauma disorders, these warnings are very useful to me and others. They’re not spoilers (no more than a historical note is a spoiler – it’s literal history. Spoiler alert: it already happened). As I’ve said prior, a content warning doesn’t spoil a movie so it shouldn’t spoil a book. They’re just so that people can figure out if they can read the work, should avoid the work completely, or wait for a time when they would be better able to handle the content. No point in trying to lose readers because of “shock value” that will make the trigger-affected readers leave anyways because they were surprised by the content. No one wants to have a disorder episode when they’re trying to have a good time.