In Which I Discuss a Serious Topic

I don’t usually discuss real-world events on this blog. This is partly for purely mercenary reasons. I want people to read and enjoy my stories. I also want people to buy them. ��(Which you can do on Amazon! And if you order right now, I’ll throw in a free set of Ginsu steak-knives!) ��I decided to go the self-publishing route, because, why not? It worked for Fifty Shades. On the other hand,��that series was a unique circumstance (it caught the tail end of the Twilight boom, right when e-book readers were coming up, so lots of people could read it without letting other people know they were reading it). Also, I can’t write that material. If I tried to write that sort of thing, or even the standard stuff you’d find in romance novels, I honestly couldn’t do it and take it seriously. Moral objections aside (and I do have those), I’d probably be giggling all the way through, and it would sound horribly stilted. It would be like the Ember Island Players version of a romance novel. “OH I’M TEARBENDING!”

Anyway. Getting back to the point, I naturally want people to read my work, and once you get into serious discussions, you lose people reading it for the sheer joy of reading. Instead you either have people reading what you write in order to attack it (That person said a Horrible Thing! Shun the non-believer!), or people reading what you write uncritically and praising it to the skies (That person is on Our Team! They must be defended!). You get the idea. I mean, I do have political opinions, but I prefer to keep them to myself in online formats, and mostly discuss them offline with people who I know will still be my friends afterwards. It’s more difficult to maintain civility online. (He said, somewhat obviously).

However, there is now an issue about which I cannot keep silent. I must speak out.

The dress is white and gold.

There. What I have written, I have written.