feline-reading

“I’m Jack, short for Jacqueline,” said the one in the glasses. She pointed to the one in pink. “This is Jill, short for Jillian, because our parents should never have been allowed to name their own children.”

For Halloween, my sibling @aelin-ashryver-galathynius and I dressed up as Jack and Jill Wolcott from the Wayward Children series by @seananmcguire! We had fun pretending to stab each other with scissors :)

She's the one who went and became beloved of a monster. She's the one who wanted to be just. Like. Him.

McGonagall is the best portrayed cat in the series and she’s not even a cat!

“The Minotaur.” A rich voice emanated from behind the bull mask, amusement rounding it’s tone.

“Is there a Minotaur in Shakespeare’s play?” Odette queried.

Bastien shook his horned head once.

Ummm....

google docs: open

There is a new Wattpad competitor called Dreame.

I suspect a lot of people here read stories on Wattpad.

Dreame is similar in concept.

BUT.

Dreame has been attempting to headhunt writers from Wattpad. Sounds good, right?

Nope.

One writer was offered a $60 advance…to sign over the RIGHTS to his book. They’ll license the print book rights back for 30%.

Please do not sign with these people as a writer.

They are claiming for one of their “contests” that they will “invite professional book reviewers” to review your books. No professional book reviewer is going to review a web series.

Some more gems, because I went to their site so you don’t have to:

To get the reward for daily updates, you have to update DAILY. You get two days off a month.

Here are a few articles on red flags and publishing scams, which can help writers make a more informed and safer choice:

Writer Beware 

Publishing Companies To Avoid And Nasty New Author Scams

In bold are names/sites you should avoid:

“Dear Author, [you guys know my name by now, gimme a break]

This is Monnie, an editor from STARY PTE. LTD, which is based in Singapore and owns two fast-developing fiction-reading platforms: FicFun, focusing on presenting thrilling stories for male readers while Dreame, a community featuring romance stories for girls. […] You can learn more about us by visiting our website, or joining the FB Group “Online Fiction Writers & Readers Union”.

Fifth time’s the charm, eh creeps?

… oh look it’s FanLib 2.0.

And while they may be soliciting fanfic, their TOS says:

1.1 Work means all or part of the [ ] or its derivatives originally created or written by Author, who owns complete copyrights of such Work under any applicable law or regulation.

4.2 Author guarantees that they shall not plagiarize or infringe another person’s legal rights and that the Work is completely original.

And look what else!

4.3 Author shall uphold the reputation of Dreame and will not engage in activities that harm Dreame nor its interests.

This is a HUGE WHOPPING RED FLAG (argh, why can’t I do red text on a PC?) Nope, nope, NO HELL NO - never never NEVER accept any contract that says you will not engage in activities that harm “[company] or its interests.”

This means authors can’t even say, “ugh, this posting schedule is rough.” Can’t tell other people your manager is abusive. Arguably, can’t talk to a lawyer if they’re not paying you on time!

(Courts tend to allow for that. Can you afford a lawyer to defend that right, as well as your right to get paid?)

4.4 Author agrees to provide necessary assistance or support for Dreame’s marketing and promotion for the Work, including without limitation necessary information or other promotional materials.

AGAIN HELL NO. This means you never get paid, because they insist you’re supposed to bear the full cost of marketing. They can even charge you for marketing your work! “We made an ad for YouTube; it cost $4,500 to produce. Pay up.”

4.5 Author can self-publish the Work in paperback form only and all earnings will be Author’s own. However, Author shall not publish or sell the Work on any other third parties’ online platforms. If Author wishes to publish or sell the Work on a third party’s platform, Author must get Dreame’s express written permission by giving prior written notice to Dreame. Any future earnings made in this way shall be charged a further 30% commission by Dreame.

Aaah… wot? You can publish in paperback (but not digital forms?), but you… can’t sell on Amazon? AND Dreame wants to insist on a 30% commission? (Which is not defined… is that 30% of list price, or 30% of net? When and how do they think you’re supposed to pay them?)

courtney milan is a chinese-american romance author and was the chair of the romance writers of america ethics committee

she wrote a twitter post where she called a book by kathryn lynn davis ‘a fucking racist mess’ (because it was)

davis and suzan tisdale file a complaint because How Dare She

are you guys seeing this because oh my fucking god ARE YOU SEEING THIS

“it was the nineties and she did a lot of research into chinese people, you’re just racist against white people”

they kicked courtney off the board because of this

immediately people started resigning because that’s horseshit

so many people resigned

SO MANY

it turned out the people resigning were some of the only people keeping the absolute bugfuckery of the people in charge at bay

the decision was rescinded like “oh whoops our bad” but like?? too late????

all the dirty laundry is coming out on twitter

there are petitions to get the president, president-elect, and executive director of rwa recalled because they’re clearly fuckups

either the rwa is going to need to go through some big changes, or a lot of authors (particularly queer authors and authors of color) are going to have to make their own org

the founder of rwa was a black woman so bigots taking over is especially fucking galling

courtney milan is also the reason we have dinosaur emojis

she points out racism in racist book from the 90s

author gets pissed and makes multiple ethics complaints about it

milan is asked to step down as chair rather than simply recusing herself like would be more reasonable 

the above firewalled secret sub-panel is formed

also apparently due to how easy it is for social media likes and tweets and retweets and shit are to remove without a trace unless you ALREADY have a screenshot, there is an EXCEPTION for social media stuff in the RWA ethics rules since it’s so difficult to prove fuck all with any accuracy on either side of the complaint due to that, which means that technically speaking, the ethics complaints based solely on those tweets should not have even been VALID as far as I can tell.

ALL SORTS OF SHIT STARTS COMING OUT FROM PEOPLE FROM OVER THE YEARS

turns out also that as recently as september there were ethics complaints being made that were NEVER TURNED OVER TO THE ETHICS COMMITTEE.

People are asking to have their membership removed/their dues refunded/their books submitted to their awards removed from consideration/etc

people were struggling to get a response on the dues refund despite being already removed from having access to the website

at least one writer emailed to complain about the situation but did not express a desire to be removed as a member, just mentioned she would not be renewing membership in january, but WAS removed already from membership

seriously just look into this shit it’s so maddening

Also the president of the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) spoke up on twitter to let the RWA authors dropping the org like flies that if there is even a HINT of specfic to their novels, they can apply to the SFWA instead.  (Is there reincarnation? premonitions? ghosts?  IT’S SPECFIC!)

me:

me:

me:

me:

me:

Me:

me: