Cornelius Books

i am looking for historical fiction or fantasy books with a king/knight romance, or something along those lines of a dynamic, if that makes sense. think, like, merlin or bodyguard au but fantasy/medieval (and preferably queer) okay. my soul is craving this.

Something a friend said reminded me of A Book Review Incident I was involved in a while back, wherein a DNF review I wrote made some people angry both for a) not finishing the work, and b) what I had to say about the part I did read.

I'm not going to dredge up the review itself or name the book, that's not important. But thinking about it again while doing dishes (dish-thoughts is the new shower-thoughts) made me realize there's distinction between types of review and the expectations people have for them, and thus why some people absolutely cannot stand DNF reviews.

Starting with a behavioral question to see if this is Relatable ™:

Have you ever found yourself refraining from telling the truth or hiding information because you’re afraid of what the other person will think, even though you know that delaying the inevitable will only make it worse?

Maybe you’re afraid they’ll be mad, or will think less/differently of you. And you know that you can’t hide the truth from them forever, but you still immediately default to simple lies like “I’m fine” or “everything’s fine” or “I definitely am not planning on being possessed by a spirit during a concert you’re going to attend.”

Real talk, irl I know someone who does this all the time (not the plant part, the other part). Has for his whole life. It’s like clockwork. “Hey it’s nice that you’re confiding in me about this, but you should tell X about this, too.” “Yeah, I will.” (doesn’t do it, X gets mad months later when they find out). Every single time.

Now, if I have a character do this, here’s my fear of what the reader will say:

That’s so dumb. Why didn’t he just communicate? Why didn’t he just tell them? This is just manufacturing conflict because he didn’t tell the truth. Doesn’t he know that they’ll be made if he doesn’t tell them?

And just like irl, the answer is: yes!! he does know!! of course he knows, but this is a deep brain pattern and he’s fighting an instinctual fear of shame linked to his low self-worth!! and his arc is to work through that and confide in people again!! It’s psychological internal conflict! Man vs self, babey!

So, I guess my question is: if you were a reader, would you find this sort of behavior/arc annoying, dumb, or angsty? Or would you relate to this character’s behavior?

Book-specific context below the cut if you’re curious, but it does contain spoilers for both book 2 and book 3:

It needs to be something low-to-no stakes and the more frequently you can fit it in the better. Like they saved the last slice of cheesecake from something and put it in the fridge for their crush but don’t tell them until it is a rotten blue glob in the fridge when it is their crush’s turn to clean the fridge.

come at the problem from a different angle

Since the beginning of this project, I have made a point not to discuss my own life in depth. You have no way of knowing my gender, whether I am cisgender, transgender, genderfluid, or nonbinary. You also know almost nothing about the gender of Dean, the editor of this project. This assumption that both of us are cisgender is not harmless.

Remember Becky Abertalli? She is the author of Simon VS. The Homo sapiens Agenda, well I want to quote something she wrote:

"Having your book adapted to a film brings a lot of notoriety and attention, especially online, and it’s not always the fun kind. Unsurprisingly, there was quite a bit of discourse about my identity — how could there not be? Love, Simon was the first gay teen rom com to be released widely by a major film studio, and it was based on a book written by an allocishet woman. Yes, the film’s director was openly gay. No, not everyone cared (frankly, a lot of people still don’t know Love, Simon was based on a book). But in many online spaces, my straightness was a springboard for some — legitimately important — conversations about representation, authenticity, and ownership of stories. And for some people, my straightness was enough to boycott the film entirely.

Then Leah on the Offbeat came out about a month later, and the discourse exploded all over again. There were thinkpieces based on the premise that I, a straight woman, clearly knew nothing about being a bi girl. There were tweets and threads and blog posts, and just about every single one I came across mentioned my straightness. And when Leah debuted on the NYT list, authors I admired and respected tweeted their disappointment that this “first” had been taken by a straight woman. Of course, Leah wasn’t the first f/f YA book to hit the New York Times list. And maybe people were wrong about the other stuff too. But the attention and scrutiny were so overwhelming, and it all hurt so badly, I slammed the lid down on that box and forgot I’d ever cracked it open.

At least I didn’t remember I remembered.

I deleted the sexuality labels from my website. I declined to answer certain questions in interviews. I’d get quietly, passionately indignant when people made assumptions about other authors’ gender identities and sexualities. And I’d feel uncomfortable, anxious, almost sick with nerves every time they discussed mine.

And holy shit, did people discuss. To me, it felt like there was never a break in the discourse, and it was often searingly personal. I was frequently mentioned by name, held up again and again as the quintessential example of allocishet inauthenticity. I was a straight woman writing shitty queer books for the straights, profiting off of communities I had no connection to.

Because the thing is, I called myself straight in a bunch of early interviews.

But labels change sometimes. That’s what everyone always says, right? It’s okay if you’re not out. It’s okay if you’re not ready. It’s okay if you don’t fully understand your identity yet. There’s no time limit, no age limit, no one right way to be queer.

And yet a whole lot of these very same people seemed to know with absolute certainty that I was allocishet. And the less certain I was, the more emphatically strangers felt the need to declare it. Apparently it was obvious from my writing. Simon’s fine, but it was clearly written by a het. You can just tell. Her books aren’t really for queer people.

You know what’s a mindfuck? Questioning your sexual identity in your thirties when every self-appointed literary expert on Twitter has to share their hot take on the matter. Imagine hundreds of people claiming to know every nuance of your sexuality just from reading your novels. Imagine trying to make space for your own uncertainty. Imagine if you had a Greek chorus of internet strangers propping up your imposter syndrome at every stage of the process.

The thing is, I really do believe in the value of critically discussing books, particularly when it comes to issues of representation. And I believe in the vital importance of Ownvoices stories. Most of the identities represented in my books are Ownvoices. But I don’t think we, as a community, have ever given these discussions the care and nuance they deserve.

Consider the origin of the Ownvoices hashtag. It was created in 2015 by author Corinne Duyvis, with the purpose of highlighting stories written by authors who share the same marginalized identities as their characters. But Corinne has always emphasized caution when it comes to using Ownvoices to determine which authors can tell which stories. And she’s been incredibly clear and emphatic about not weaponizing the term to pressure authors to disclose private aspects of their identities.

So why do we keep doing this? Why do we, again and again, cross the line between critiquing books and making assumptions about author identities? How are we so aware of invisible marginalization as a hypothetical concept, but so utterly incapable of making space for it in our community?

Let me be perfectly clear: this isn’t how I wanted to come out. This doesn’t feel good or empowering, or even particularly safe. Honestly, I’m doing this because I’ve been scrutinized, subtweeted, mocked, lectured, and invalidated just about every single day for years, and I’m exhausted. And if you think I’m the only closeted or semi-closeted queer author feeling this pressure, you haven’t been paying attention.

And I’m one of the lucky ones! I’m a financially independent adult. I can’t be disowned. I come from a liberal family, I have an enormous network of queer friends and acquaintances, and my livelihood isn’t even remotely at risk. I’m hugely privileged in more ways than I can count. And this was still brutally hard for me. I can’t even imagine what it’s like for other closeted writers, and how unwelcome they must feel in this community.

Even as I write this, I’m bracing for the inevitable discourse — I could draft the twitter threads myself if I wanted to. But I’d rather just make a few things really clear. First, this isn’t an attempt to neutralize criticism of my books, and you’re certainly entitled to any reactions you might have had to their content. Second, I’m not asking you to validate my decision to write Simon (or What If It’s Us, or mlm books in general).

But if I can ask for something, it’s this: will you sit for a minute with the discomfort of knowing you may have been wrong about me? And if your immediate impulse is to scrutinize my personal life, my marriage, or my romantic history, can you try to check yourself?

Or how about this: can we all be a bit more careful when we engage in queer Ownvoices discourse? Can we remember that our carelessness in these discussions has caused real harm? And that the people we’re hurting rarely have my degree of privilege or industry power? Can we make space for those of us who are still discovering ourselves? Can we be a little more compassionate? Can we make this a little less awful for the next person?"

Hello, I am the next person. I am the author who isn't lucky enough to disclose every single one of their marginalizations on social media, and I deserve better than this.

That said, just because you are writing an ownvoices story does not mean that you can’t perpetuate and include harmful tropes and inaccuracies. Society is what teaches them and because we all live in society we are influenced by them. It is better to look at a work and point out the flaws independent of the author’s identity because ownvoices will not be free and clear of issues.

Docket 936591

Basic concept is liberal moon city (Agate) and conservative planet (Fetid, according to MC’s). There is also an ice planet that is inhabited, but it is less important to the story.

Pick a planet and pick a category and I will give some random tidbit of information.

History

Culture

Economy

Religion

Language

Gerald: the one murdered for noticing what is going on

Hannah is 100% based on Jenna from Waitress and therefore will be discovered to have violent past but will be innocent

Stella is not who she seems, either murdered to get her way in and stand in as the person or identical twin trying to figure out why her sister was murdered á la glass onion

Peter and Pradyumna are either going home before the murder starts or only guilty of self-defense violence

Which leaves Lottie the old lady as the culprit unless it is the co-host or one of the staff.

And my dear Lottie is already sneaking around. Suspicious. But not as suspicious as the extra person at the welcome dinner.

It is really jarring to go from first person to third for Betsy’s parts. Why do that?

Looking at the drama between Betsy’s mother and Lottie’s mother, I was thinking they both killed each other. But now I’m wondering if Betsy killed Lottie’s mother and her own mother left bereft from her daughter becoming a murderer and being cheated on. At least I’m assuming Betsy’s father is the one who raised her after the unmentioned “incident” when Betsy was 12.

Yep. They went with that. It’s not cool or clever or interesting and it makes you dislike the characters you grew to love, which maybe was the point.

Except the point of the murder mystery is about the violence and an active choice to harm someone to such a degree. Instead we have a child having a temper tantrum turned deadly over her parents getting divorced and a revenge fantasy about it being self-defense to kill someone just being an asshole in relationships. Archie was not revealed to have raped anyone and Hannah’s hand wasn’t really forced so it really falls short of feeling justified (I definitely don’t trust the year later retelling from Hannah’s POV).

I was enjoying the story, but the ending sucked. And I had thought it was going to be a locked house thriller where the killer kills again, but that definitely didn’t happen. Inheritance questions, sabotage of a show, attempting to corner out someone else are all intriguing premises to be pushed too far, but were completely ignored in the violence and resolution.

Gerald: the one murdered for noticing what is going on

Hannah is 100% based on Jenna from Waitress and therefore will be discovered to have violent past but will be innocent

Stella is not who she seems, either murdered to get her way in and stand in as the person or identical twin trying to figure out why her sister was murdered á la glass onion

Peter and Pradyumna are either going home before the murder starts or only guilty of self-defense violence

Which leaves Lottie the old lady as the culprit unless it is the co-host or one of the staff.

And my dear Lottie is already sneaking around. Suspicious. But not as suspicious as the extra person at the welcome dinner.

It is really jarring to go from first person to third for Betsy’s parts. Why do that?

Looking at the drama between Betsy’s mother and Lottie’s mother, I was thinking they both killed each other. But now I’m wondering if Betsy killed Lottie’s mother and her own mother left bereft from her daughter becoming a murderer and being cheated on. At least I’m assuming Betsy’s father is the one who raised her after the unmentioned “incident” when Betsy was 12.