The Harmony of Falling Snow: ANDY! ANDY! AAAAANDYYYYYYYY!
Me: Yes?
Harmony: I’m published!
Me: I know! You’re out in digital now! Anyone can go to Ko-fi, itch.io, or a bunch of bookstores like Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords to get a lovely epub and/or mobi file containing you! And it will only cost them $4.99 if they do it during Pride! You are, after all, a story about two pansexuals and a demisexual in a society where being picky about the gender of your partners is considered a little quirky and where the idea of labeling a child with a gender is gross, so everyone grows up agender until they declare otherwise.
Harmony: That is so cool! When can readers get me in dead-tree?
Me: Soon? The hope is June 21st.
Harmony: Will those be signed?
Me: Maybe. I am planning to offer online ordering of signed copies for a short window. I’ll be announcing how I’m doing that in the next few days. If people are interested, they should comment here or send me an email to help me determine how many books I’ll need to order.
Harmony: You should do a signing in a bookstore!
Me: Uh… Yeah. So, arranging that is more than my anxiety will let me do right now. Publishing at all has been a serious fight.
Harmony: Right. You have as much of a problem with anxiety as my character Maggie does, don’t you?
Me: Which is why I’m confident in my descriptions of her experiences with it. I also have bipolar disorder, like Yuri.
Harmony: Related to that, I see you added some content advisories to my listings.
This book contains depictions of:
* Deportation/government violence
* Mental health conditions including anxiety, bipolar disorder, and PTSD
* Toxic family relationships
* Fantasy world racism
* Voluntary drug and alcohol use
* Involuntary drug use
Me: Yeah. I think they make you sound more depressing than you are, but I don’t want anyone to be triggered by something they weren’t expecting. That’s happened to me with books describing anxiety and/or depression without their summaries making it clear they were going to go there. Most of the time I can handle seeing my conditions reflected in writing, but there are times when it’s just not healthy.
Harmony: I don’t think I actually depict Maggie’s violent government abduction… I start after that.
Me: You do. However, as the source of Maggie’s PTSD, it’s referenced enough I’d hate for someone who can’t handle the element to stumble over it without warning. Although your blurb mentions that your trigger incident is a deportation, it doesn’t get into how awful the events leading to it were.
Harmony: Now I’m feeling bummed out… Tell me something happy?
Me: Despite all the negative, possibly triggering elements you contain, you’re a book about hope, recovery, and love. Your story is, overall, a happy one.
Harmony: Okay. But one more thing about my content… I notice there’s nothing there about sex.
Me: You don’t depict sex. That’s what the ‘sweet’ in your description indicates. Your characters aren’t celibate, but you never show anything more physically intimate than kissing and cuddles. I don’t think people need warning that you are a kissing book.
Harmony: But I read somewhere that adult romance ALWAYS has on-page sex.
Me: I’ve seen people claim that too. It’s false. A lot of romance readers do like seeing on-page sex, but since I’m not one of them, I saw no reason to force myself to write those scenes. I can’t imagine I’d do a very good job of it regardless.
A Melody of Shining Stars: Sorry to interrupt, but I was under the impression you’d be working on me today.
Me: Yes! I need to make some tea, then I will do that! I’ll just be going over scenes you already have today, but I’ll be adding new ones by the end of the week.
Harmony: Don’t forget to keep telling people about me, though!
Me: I won’t. In fact, I’ll post this conversation to the blog while the tea steeps! I think I’ll even share it to the mailing list!
Harmony: Huzzah!
