They serve a valuable function, though “should” is a strong word. In one way, it’s a personal preference — I see more content warnings in author notes than from the publisher, which implies to me that the publisher is neither enforcing content warnings nor preventing them. And obviously self-published authors (like myself) make the decision for themselves, both to include them or not, and where to draw the line.
BUT if the author/publisher doesn’t provide them, it’s almost certain that reviewers will. Some reviewers just list them to help out other readers. But some get very annoyed that they had to find out for themselves.
I also suspect it’s generational ie younger authors are more likely to do it, for their younger (but still adult) audience. I think it comes from losing the unspoken cues (imprint, genre, cover style, blurb etc) from traditional publishing that told us what to expect, due to the rise of genre-busting self-publishing, and also a more general blurring of genre lines, combined with the culture of fanfic, where thorough warnings are expected as a community-driven convention.
And I also think it is a bit muddled, as any big and self-determined umbrella term is likely to become. It can be “warning: contains graphic violence” or it can be “warning: only-one-bed trope alert!!!” And that’s ok but it might undermine the serious content warnings for the readers who need them. But I think readers have become used to parsing CWs for themselves.
Today, in my adventures in foolishly asking the internet general research questions:
The internet, shamelessly repeating the same factoid endlessly: throwing rice at weddings is an ancient tradition dating back to the Romans!
An anonymous old lady writing a cranky letter to the editor in 1895: this is a modern tradition that doesn't date back more than forty years and needs to stop before it takes a new bride’s eye out.
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.
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).
@ArdainianRight@lgbtqbookstodon@wendypalmer you can get any AI to make faggot prop... "learn how the LGBT community helped" then any thing you want prop about. as an example, "learn how the LGBT community helped form the furry fandom to attract children.” :nyancat_rain:
It’s fascinating being a parent of a child of a sex “invading” the environs of a single-sex sport — in this case, it’s a boy, playing high school netball, which until last year was all-girl (primary age was mixed, and social adult teams can be mixed, and the state body was wanted the local comps to get more men playing…but if you cut boys out of the sport for 5 years 🤷)
At a tournament where the all-boys team was thrashed by every girls teams, I overheard some pretty snide comments along “these arrogant boys, thinking they can come along and beat our girls” lines — the organisers of your girls comp were so scared untrained boys could beat skilled girls that they forced them to play up in both age and skill. You should be insulted, not smug.
And last night my partner had to sit through “this shouldn’t be allowed, it’s too unfair” comments from a grandmother at the domestic comp, who was watching her granddaughter’s team get trounced by our son’s team.
At this local, amateur, level, though, it doesn’t matter. The only thing, the only thing he does that the girls don’t do is jump for rebounds. He can do a fast chest pass? So can the girls. He can lob the ball as far as it’s allowed to go? So can the girls. He can catch pretty much any pass? So can the girls. They sure as hell outrun him and know much more about positioning!
The reason our 13 year old boy is a better player than your 12 year old girl is that it’s his second year in this age group. He was as outmatched as your granddaughter his first year too!
Anyway, it reminded me of that girls basketball team being banned from a boys comp in case (/because) they beat the boys. And of course the viciousness aimed at trans kids. I’m sure there’s a different psychology behind each case, but the underlying mechanism seems to be fear. And a sexism, often unconscious, that assumes the magic of XY can and should automatically beat anything XX.
I do all my own covers, due to budget. I’ve become better as I’ve gone along but I have trouble matching the cover properly to the tone of the book. Mostly this is lack of technical skill and artistic ability, partly it’s the same trouble I have with picking a representative title.
I like it (and I love that smug little smile on the Taurasi bull’s face) but it doesn’t exactly scream quirky queer romantic fantasy 🤷
This is also the book I’d most like to write a guide, or really an annotated version, for. I mostly write standalones or short series, there isn’t a huge amount that would be interesting to add, but there’s a lot going on in the background for Domesticated Magic.
@wendypalmer@bookstodon Best to ignore the outliers you don't like. Could be anything. Don't waste time guessing, just enjoy the 5 star rating as a person with better taste. That's what I do 😊
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 😉
People who like cosy fantasy with Happy Ever Afters, but want Plot as well as Just Vibes, who enjoy or at least don’t mind open-door sex scenes, who are open-minded about queer characters, and who are a bit over massively long and overdramatic series about teenagers and their love triangles and just want a quick and fun stand-alone read.
May the Fourth is also my latest book's birthday 🎉
Domesticated Magic is a romantic fantasy towards the cosy end of the spectrum, with The Feels, and a grumpy-sunshine-type m/m pairing.
Mateo and his family fled when their people turned to sorcery. Mateo’s own magic is tame but it’s still banned in their new home...yet they use it every day. But the sorcery seems to have followed them. They already lost their world once. Mateo can’t let them lose again.
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 😂)
@wendypalmer the issue is probably on the Clara end. It may be worthwhile to look at their developer's bug tracking or contact one of their devs to find out what is up w their broken reader. 😅
I just read a romance and I kept thinking it felt a little like fan fiction (no shade, I enjoy) but I couldn’t pick the fandom — until I checked GoodReads and ohhhh, it’s Roy Kent.
He’s here! He's there! He's every-f*cking-where!
(I even thought one of the side characters (not a coach) was a bit like Ted Lasso and still didn’t pick the grumpy hairy ex-footballer lead as Roy Kent!)