I haven't written since the election. It's hard to know what to say. I'm disappointed and scared, like so many of us. I follow Erin Reed's newsletter, which I highly recommend to all of you (www.erininthemorning.com), and my heart is heavy. Texas has introduced legislation which, if passed, will make it impossible for Kissmate and I to ever return home even for visits: the new bathroom bill under consideration will apply to the DFW airport (as well as many other places). Federally, the Project 2025 rulebook will label most if not all of my books as porn for having trans and queer characters in them--even the books which don't have any sex whatsoever will be considered "porn". This is new territory for us; no one knows if queer books will be merely banned or if prosecution will go after queer authors too. Though the majority of my books are adult-aimed and marketed, the online perception of me as a YA adult will work against me. My only child-appropriate book, my collection of Grimms fairy tales, does not contain sex but does have queer and trans characters in it.
I don't want to stop writing, but I'm worried that it may soon be unsafe to sell my writing. For these reasons, I have decided to withdraw my books from the various stores where they are sold. They will still be available to download here, for Patreon subscribers, but they will not be accessible in stores. Patreon provides me with age-restriction options that book stores do not, which means I can honestly state that my books are not being made available to minors. Future books will be published on Patreon (with downloads for people who wish to read offline), but I do not know when, or if, it will be safe to return to mainstream stores.
I will be closing my remaining social media accounts and largely removing my presence from online spaces. If you're active on my Discord, you know you can still reach me there. I am looking into ways to make my blog private and it looks like I can restrict it to specific email addresses. I am unsure if any email address will do, or if it needs to be a gmail address (since Google owns Blogger). I do ask that people send me an email to AnaMardoll at Gmail dot com to let me know if you want to keep access to the blog, so I can add you. I will be locking down before the end of the year, so please try not to reach out to me as soon as you can.
I am sorry that this update is not a happy one. I hope that I am overreacting and that the next 4 years will be uneventful and easy-breezy. I hope that my anxiety is unfounded and that common sense will prevail in understanding that there is nothing sinister in queer books written for queer readers--that queer readers exist and deserve to read about themselves as protagonists and sidekicks and villains, just like everyone else. But I would rather be safe "just in case" and be wrong. Take care and be safe and I wish you all the happiest holidays possible.
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December Newsletter (2024) |
