Why I am self-publishing
Shortly before the election, I found this on Reddit: Racist YA novel receives backlash. This was posted at the cesspit known as Oh No They Didn’t, a LiveJournal community dedicated to celebrity gossip. I used to visit that site frequently but after the 2008 election, I stopped, and I haven’t really missed it since.
I posted this link on a private Facebook group when I first saw it (probably the first few days of November) and we discussed it. I pre-ordered the book.
I was wandering around Reddit when I saw the dormant thread on the YAlit subreddit, and wanted to know what was up. Had anything changed? I had thought that the author’s publisher, HarlequinTEEN would push it back to remove the “racist” crap from it and I was right. The book is no longer available for pre-order, although the book’s GoodReads page is intact (complete with liberal assholes crowing over this latest “victory”).
The book was called The Continent by Keira Drake. The blurb:
For her sixteenth birthday, Vaela Sun receives the most coveted gift in all the Spire—a trip to the Continent. It seems an unlikely destination for a holiday: a cold, desolate land where two “uncivilized” nations remain perpetually at war. Most citizens tour the Continent to see the spectacle and violence of battle—a thing long vanished in the Spire. For Vaela—a smart and talented apprentice cartographer—it is an opportunity to improve upon the maps she’s drawn of this vast, frozen land.
But an idyllic aerial exploration is not to be had: the realities of war are made clear in a bloody battle seen from the heli-plane during the tour, leaving Vaela forever changed. And when a tragic accident leaves her stranded on the Continent, she has no illusions about the true nature of the danger she faces. Starving, alone, and lost in the middle of a war zone, Vaela must try to find a way home—but first, she must survive.
According to some GoodReads reviewers that have actually read advanced reader copies of the book, the “uncivilized” nations are dark-skinned people whose cultures are heavily inspired by Native American culture.
Insert eyeroll here. These are fictional characters — fictional lands, fictional cultures, fictional history, fictional language, etc. FICTION. Note the bit about the so-called uncivilized nations being at war with each other: “uncivilized” is in quotation marks. What does that say to me? It says that the main character will start out with the notion these nations are uncivilized, but that when she meets people from these nations, her original opinion will be challenged. I mentioned this as much in my own “review” on GoodReads (the book was available on NetGalley, but is no longer available), even though I had not read it.
And now the publisher has decided to scrub it of anything these ridiculous SJWs deem “racist” or otherwise “problematic”: HarlequinTEEN’s statement on The Continent by Keira Drake. For some odd reason, their statement is a JPEG image. Weird.
The big five publishers, and others, are run entirely by whiny asshole SJWs. They’re going to censor this chick’s debut novel because of a bunch of whiners who can’t handle the words “savage” and “uncivilized” — people who cannot handle history and the truth. I have absolutely no intention of publishing my novel with any of these clowns. I am going to self-publish. Of course, I need to actually finish my book first (and how pathetic am I; I actually whipped up a cover for the book – it’s my third cover for the book. Jesus.).
I did read one review that was actually decent and fair. It doesn’t sound like a book I’d really like, but that’s not really the point. The point is that the publisher and the author crumbled before the hysterical nonsense of the SJWs. If they don’t want to read the book, then don’t. But why censor the book to please these brats?
I read through this whole affair, noting that it happened merely days before the election, and I thought, “well, no wonder Trump got elected. There goes yet another reason for his popularity.”
These people are beyond parody.