wendypalmer

wendypalmer, 4 months ago to writing

#WritersCoffeeClub #Writing 25 How do you feel about writers who write outside of their gender/sexuality/race etc?

I have lots of complicated feelings on this one, I could write an essay…

All right, I’m going to write an essay.

Firstly, as many other responders have said, it’d be pretty dull if I only wrote characters that reflected my cisgender straight(ish) white abled female self. I think representation is essential, and the more books get banned, the more bannable characters I want to put in my books. My MC for my current WIP is trans for exactly that reason, because Fuck You Moms For Liberty.

But!

🧵

wendypalmer, 8 months ago to random

Oh man, I did that thing where I stared at the cover I’m designing for far too long and now I hate it and every variation of it.

#WritingCommunity #CoverDesign

wendypalmer, 1 year ago to random

I listened to a podcast with “three simple shifts for living a more sustainable life” and it was meant to be a “stay positive, small things can make a difference” hopeful episode and all it did was depress me because I’ve been doing those three simple things (and more) for years and I think we’re far beyond small individual changes making any sort of difference.

So please, #ClimateChange experts - please tell me three EFFECTIVE things an individual can do (in 2023, in rural Australia) that might help make their kid’s world even slightly better 20 years from now?

In the mood I’m in, I’m just hoping it’s not “start stockpiling tinned food and bottled water”.

(We do the sustainability basics, we’re on solar panels and electric car, we’re planting trees, we’ve reduced our meat consumption and food waste, we don’t do fast fashion, we vote with climate in mind, I used to write to my MPs before I gave up…but there must be more an individual can do)

#sustainability #climateCrisis #AlsoPersonalCrisis

wendypalmer, 18 days ago to linguistics

When people tell me they read one of my books and found it “quite good”, I like to assume they’re from the US where “quite” apparently means “very” 😊

As opposed to the UK/Aus, where “quite good” is just damning with faint praise.

Unless you say it was “really quite good”. That’s when you mean “very good”.

If you say “quite good, really”, that means you’re surprised it was any good.

And if you say “Oh, I say, that is quite, quite remarkable”, you’re an 18th-century Earl confronted by a tempestuous highland beauty who is tossing her raven-black locks and flashing her sapphire-blue eyes at you because you’re enclosing her commons 😉

#WritingCommunity #linguistics #quite

wendypalmer, 5 months ago to bookstodon

@bookstodon got about 30 seconds into the audiobook of System Collapse before deciding I couldn’t handle the voice. No shade on the narrator, I just can’t hear Murderbot as a male with an American accent after creating my own voice for it while reading all the prior books.

Luckily I already bought a print copy for my partner for his birthday so I’ll just have to wait on him to finish.

wendypalmer, 4 months ago to random

So…

If I was married to a Viking and I was really annoyed with him and wanted to burn his turf-roofed longhouse to the ground…can I?

I know Vikings set fire to each other’s longhouses quite commonly, but that’s a lot of men on the attack. Could one person do it efficiently, perhaps from the inside, fast enough to not get caught at it? (I ask because damp green grass and sod doesn’t seem overly flammable for arson)

(And if there’s a saga which covers a one-woman rampage, please tell me which one?)

#vikings #histodon #historian

wendypalmer, 5 months ago to random

#WritersCoffeeClub Dec 16: Any writing tropes you dislike, without insulting other club members?

I’m mostly exposed to romance genre tropes, and pretty much enjoy any of them as long as they’re done well…though it’s going to have to be VERY well done if it’s the billionaire trope. Billionaires are just kind of icky these days, and the powerful man vs naive woman dynamic too red flag-y for me.

Over in m/m romances, I’m a bit nonplussed by the mpreg trope. As someone who has given birth, I’m always like, but where is that foetus going to live for nine months and how are you getting it out of you?? 😊

wendypalmer, 7 months ago to Amazon

Just trying to make a minor adjustment to my author profile at Amazon...

Could someone give me a hint as to what could possibly be triggering the "There is language within your submission that is in violation of our Content Guidelines" warning in the below:

Wendy Palmer lives in Bridgetown, Western Australia with her partner, son, dogs, goats, alpacas, bees and chickens. She's patted tigers, ridden elephants, dog-sledded across glaciers, faced down lions in the Serengeti, swum with whale sharks, and camped in the Sahara, but she not-so-secretly prefers curling up with a good book.

She writes fantasy fiction with entertaining characters, enjoyably perilous adventures, romantic entanglements, some dark undertones, but always happy, hopeful endings. Find her at wendypalmer.au

(Note only the second paragraph is new...but I guess new guidelines might be affecting the first paragraph now I'm trying to edit it).

#WritingCommunity #Amazon #ContentGuidelines

wendypalmer, 1 year ago to random

My kid’s rural high school hasn’t been able to get a language teacher, and so every year group is doing this Positive Behaviour Support class instead once a week (and I think two health lessons instead of one, if the language would normally be two lessons a week).

Thing is:
He’s already done the PBS lessons in primary school, plus they cover it in Form every morning.
He’s not one of the kids who needs to have positive behaviour explained to him at length, repeatedly (the kids who do need it don’t exactly benefit from sitting through a lesson a week either tbh).
He’s one of two students at the school already doing online learning for some classes.
Plus doing language learning in his own time after school.
We’d rather he spent that hour more productively and would be happy to arrange an online class for him or support him in an independent learning project.
Principal is pretty damn defensive.

Is there any chance of getting him exempted from this class on the grounds he is proven to be capable of independent online learning and offering a course of study?

And if so, how best to broach it without getting the principal’s back up?

(No shade on the school or the teachers, I know it’s a tough job, but this particular class just feels like a complete waste of time)

#australia #education #highSchool #teaching

wendypalmer, 8 days ago to queer

As usual, my light fantasy romance books (LGBTQ+ characters, positive rep) are on sale for all of June at Smashwords. DRM-free, and I’m happy to virtually assist with sideloading to your ereader if you need it.

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/wendylpalmer

And as usual, I will donate ALL my June royalties, not just from Smashwords sales, to an Australian LGBTQ+ charity (at the moment I favour the Equality Project, but am open to suggestions).

The Uses of Illicit Art (m/m romance) is my most popular book but I’d like to put in a good word for Fair Haven (m/nb romance) and Domesticated Magic (transm/m romance).

#pride #books #LGBTQ @lgbtqbookstodon

wendypalmer, 6 months ago to bookstodon

@bookstodon how did I not know T. Kingfisher’s fourth paladin book, Paladin’s Faith, is already out!

wendypalmer, 7 months ago to random

In the middle of a spiral about the impending disaster of climate change. I have a tight ball of anxiety in my chest and I think I’m building to a panic attack.

And there’s not a single little self care thing to do. Hey, I’ll cheer myself up by trying that new chocolate chai when I go into town today, but I’ll take my reusable cup, so that’ll make up for ChatGPT using up the resources of a small nation yearly.

OK, fine, I won’t get the chocolate chai at all, I’ll go for a nice walk instead, that will certainly make up for the endless mindless consumption of millions of other people.

The only reason, the only reason, I’m not giving up is because that’s what the billionaires and fossil fuel companies want me to do.

But fuck right now I wish I hadn’t had a kid 13 years ago.

wendypalmer, 9 months ago to accessibility

Help a Gilmore Girl fan out

(I’m surprised-not-surprised that adding audio descriptions for visually-impaired viewers is not required by law)

https://chng.it/dsnbhM2VXt

#Accessibility

wendypalmer, 5 months ago to Dogs

Photo hunt: summer dam edition

Level 1: spot the goat
Level 2: spot the duck
Level impossible: spot the dog

#spotto #CountryLife #goats #ducks #dogs

wendypalmer, 8 months ago to random

#Asstodon fans, could I get some classic names for donkeys? ETA: female/unisex names please.

(I have a character who is told off for not naming his donkey and spends some time ruminating on various possibilities, but I’m drawing a bit of a blank on “typical” donkey names. It’s set in the distant past.)

#AmWriting

wendypalmer, 6 months ago to random

A fellow author very kindly let me know one of my books has been stolen by a fake author on Amazon.

Looking into it, it looks like a modified version of one of my short blurbs is attached to a print book under a new title and cover and the fake author’s name, but with no option to look inside, I don’t know if the actual content is mine.

The same title and author, but with different cover, ISBN and blurb, is also listed separately on Amazon. Google Books has it listed with my blurb but with the content preview matching this second version.

It looks like all the books were published via Lulu, but a search for the author name shows only one title (not the one based on my book) coming up now, so possibly they’ve already been taken down.

I’ll report the version with my blurb to Amazon, but I’ve heard those stories and don’t expect much to come of it.

#WritingCommunity

wendypalmer, 8 months ago to random

I’ve started to put the “no AI training” notice in my ebooks, as recommended by the USAuthors Guild

https://authorsguild.org/news/practical-tips-for-authors-to-protect-against-ai-use-ai-copyright-notice-and-web-crawlers/

And I can’t shake the crawly feeling that it’s a mistake, that as soon as authors/publishers start putting it in, its absence will be taken as implicit permission for any ebook that doesn’t have it, when it should be an automatic opt-out. Not even opt-out, as such; existing copyright should be enough.

I’m not questioning the expertise of the guild, I think it’s just that the whole injustice of this situation is bothering me deeply tonight.

#WritingCommunity

wendypalmer, 10 months ago to random

#AmWriting a character named Genevieve, called Gin by her friends.

Wrote the line “Not happy, Gin”.

Took me about 20 minutes to work out why it sounded both odd and familiar, which incidentally is about the number of years since a certain ad permeated itself into Australian culture.

#WritingCommunity #straya

Gif featuring the line “Not happy Jan” from the Yellow Pages ad when Jan’s boss realises she hasn’t put their business in to said Yellow Pages. Jan flees in terror, and Jan’s boss opens the window to yell it after her.

wendypalmer, 4 months ago to boardgames

Which Monopoly token did you fight your siblings to the death over when you were a kid?

In our household, it was, weirdly, the boot.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say the iron was no one’s favourite.

#retro #BoardGames

wendypalmer, 3 months ago to lgbtqbookstodon

I’ll be reading Olivia Waite’s The Hellion’s Waltz in March if any #QueerRomanceClub followers would like to join me. Post commentary as you go along or a review at the end 😊

@queerromanceclub @lgbtqbookstodon

wendypalmer, 11 months ago to Economics

I have a dumb but genuine #economics question inspired by recent events.

If a billionaire loses 44 billion dollars, does it only affect him and his immediate circle, or is it such a large amount it can affect the whole national or global economy?

Or in some way did that money never really exist and it’s just changed a number in an electronic record somewhere but otherwise has no effect except perhaps on pride? By which I mean I’ve heard it said sometimes that people are “worth” a certain amount but they don’t literally have that much money in the bank, so does this just change net worth without otherwise having much affect on daily life.

wendypalmer, 1 month ago to random

oh look, I won myself

wendypalmer, 1 month ago to writing

Having a problem with my Calibre-created ebook where its chapters are listed properly in the table of contents, and the pages are counted correctly, in every device including the Kobo app on my iPad…except on my Kobo Clara ereader, where it says 1 of 22 for 3 pages in a row, then 2 of 22 for three pages etc (basically the pages aren’t reflowing with the change of screen and font size).

And I found a reddit thread where someone has the same/similar problem, and asks for a solution, and the only answer is someone informing them that pages are an obsolete concept in Ebooks, and it’s like…have you ever used any ereading device, which will tell you how many pages you have left in a chapter and recalculate that for you if you happen to change screen/font size?

And I’m so annoyed on the question-asker’s behalf. Sorry they didn’t type “pages” in quote marks to prove they know they’re not real in ebooks, or type “number of taps until I reach the end of the chapter” or whatever phrase they needed to use to not trigger a completely irrelevant lecture.

(Maybe it was that technique where you ask a question and log on as a different user to answer it very wrongly to enrage people into giving the correct answer 😂)

#ebooks #calibre #writing

wendypalmer, 24 days ago to random

My timeline at the moment 😂

wendypalmer, 14 days ago to bookstodon

This is one of those times I wish people would include a review with their rating 😊

(It’s for How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying)

#bookstodon @bookstodon #BookReviews