Resplendent.PDF, full download, no DRM.
This might be the release this book has.
I want to apologize in advance if this post feels a little scattered rather than polished. I do not have the energy right now to switch into academic writer mode. I am mostly talk-to-texting this, so expect a trail of thoughts that might wander, but which I’ll at least loosely edit for grammar. To make sense of why yesterday hit me so hard, I need to go back a bit and explain what it took to bring this book to where it is.
Resplendent has had a rough journey, so rough that calling it rough is a massive understatement.
It began as a late night harebrained idea that quickly turned into the worst first draft I have ever written. Normal. Rough draft are expected to be rough. Hence, rough draft. Things were fine, though, at least until a well-known cosplayer accused me of plagiarism. The accusation was based entirely on the fact that both of our books used the trope of dating a mob boss and both titles were alliterative valedictives. That was the entire claim. For those who do not know, Resplendent was originally titled Sincerely, Serafina because that title ties into the plot. Her book is called Anonymously, Annabeth.
The short version is that I didn’t even know her book existed. The last I had heard, she was casually editing a fanfiction that I had never read. Apparently she finished and has been querying it for a year or two, but I had no idea because I do not follow her on social media. When she saw me post about my book on Instagram, she accused me of stealing from her. She blasted me to tens of thousands of her followers, who were ready to dogpile me and were already getting riled up. I had to turn off commenting on a lot of my own social media because they were coming for me already. I have since learned that her book is a romcom with some kind of series of silly vignettes at a vacation resort, or something along those lines. It is nowhere near my book, which even one of her best friends admitted while still maintaining the plagiarism accusation. If this sounds unhinged or you wonder what I am conveniently leaving out because this is not plagiarism, I invite you to read the post where I shared all the receipts. I didn’t black out names because I am not worried about burning a bridge with someone like her.
The stress had me throwing up for a few days. It forced me to question whether I could even handle publishing this book at all. You see, years ago I was the target of a massive internet dogpile because a drama group thought it would be funny. My dog’s spay had been interrupted due to a severe anesthesia reaction, and an ex let his dog into my yard without telling me while I was at work, which resulted in a litter of puppies. I will not get into all of it because the trauma still affects my daily life. That situation escalated into people coming to my home to hurt me. The police had to intervene. People stalked me while I was pregnant and sent messages about hoping my baby would die in my arms. That baby took multiple rounds of IVF. Her twin sister already died, which the knew. I cannot even explain what that does to someone. We had to move a few times for safety. Even now, I have a locked gate going to my front door, and security cameras. I still have people dig that story up and say things directly to my daughter, who is now fifteen. (Being told by strangers that she shouldn’t exist has fucked her up. Don’t underestimate how cruel people online are since “teh lulz” is fun to assholes.)
Darling’s actions over this book… My blood pressure is elevated right now.
But I took the fuck-it mindset and decided to lampshade the whole situation. You wanna claim your romcom that you aren’t even planning to release is the basis for a very-not-romcom written by someone who you know hasn’t read your manuscript that only exist on your computer? Bring it, bitch.
My next problem was the cover. People liked the original one, and I drew it myself, but it felt wrong because it was far too light for the tone of the book. It was so light that I started questioning whether I should even publish it because I did not want readers picking it up expecting something breezy and getting something much darker. Arthur Kira Hagan gave feedback that completely turned things around and led to a full redesign. She helped me realize that I was asking for opinions about the cover without giving people the context of the story. I had accidentally created a great cover for a beach read, not a cover for a dark romance.
Once the cover was redone and another author helped me rewrite the back blurb, I felt better about the book. Around this time I also finally realized I was writing in a niche. It finally explained why none of my books ever gained traction. A dozen of these were to myself so I didn’t have to wait a bunch of weeks for author copies.
As of last night, all of them have now been pulled from publication. I admit that I never stopped to think about how dark romance or mafia romance set during the Prohibition era could be such a nonexistent and lonely niche with no readers. It turns out that it truly is. Even Melanie Harlow, who gets tens of thousands of reviews on her books, only 142 reviews on Speak Easy and 72 reviews on Speak Low. When I saw that, I accepted that my book was dead in the water. I’m not entitled to even a single sale. I know that. My presales for Resplendent sits at an as-expected zero, though I had been advertising.
Even so, this story means more to me than almost anything else I have written. There is another work in progress that comes close, but this one has my heart. I know that no one cares about a genre, but I love this story enough that I would not care if it got a thousand one star reviews. The arc, the way Serafina changes, the way everything lands for her—it makes me proud. (Guess what—some of us have used em-dashes since long before ChatGPT, so shut up about em-dashes.) I rarely say that anything I do makes me proud, and no, I don’t expect a thousand reviews. I wouldn’t expect a single sale. My sales have historically been so abysmal that anytime an author complains about their numbers, I know with absolute certainty that their sales on whichever book are higher than all of mine combined. I am easily one of the worst selling authors of all time and I can actually prove that. Zero is my median sale count despite pouring too much money into ads and promotions. Even when I offered free book packages with custom candles, bookmarks, and merch, I could not get a single beta reader or ARC reader. I was able to shrug that off because I love this book.
For the record, I can handle blunt criticism. If someone reads my work and tells me something sucks, that is fine. I am an adult and I know no book is for everyone. If I can’t defend a scene or a choice, that means I need to change it. So I welcome harsh feedback. I have been writing long enough and taken enough classes that I have no excuse for being fragile about it. I actually get excited because it gives me direction. I am the person who will genuinely thank you for letting your inner mean girl out.
Since nothing involving this book could ever go smoothly, the original release date fell apart. My daughter ended up in the hospital after failing at self deletion. My father succeeded when I was young and I witnessed it, and nearly reliving that with my kid was rough. Our little dog developed stage six heart failure. It felt like one disaster after another.
I finally set a firm date of December 8th, which is my birthday. Finances have been rough because of medical, mental health, and vet bills. This is the United States, so I probably do not need to explain more. I decided that releasing this book would be my birthday gift to myself. I can buy a physical copy later. For now, letting it exist would be enough, you know?
And then a Discord writing group happened.
Now, I want to reiterate: I’m fine with criticism. I can fix craft. I actually like fixing craft. It gives me something to do. But what hit me in that group wasn’t craft critique. Gods, how I wish it was.
A far more successful author told me that publishing work in nonstarter niche that no one cares about “adds more noise” to an already overwhelmed bookish landscape. She said books like mine make it even harder for smarter writers to be heard. Worse, others agreed.
That one hurt in a way I didn’t expect. That one is my work, my stories, and my very creative existence being framed as harmful to the writing community, with my work being compared to digital littering.
I can handle being told that something I wrote sucks. That means I know where to look to improve. But being told not to publish? At all? Because it’s harmful? That honestly blindsided me.
The thing is, the writing community means a lot to me. It’s why I beta read constantly and edit for free and have done book covers and interior art for free and never even ask for credit, and why I share authors and books whenever I can, etc. It’s why I try to give more than I take. The last thing on earth I want is to hoard anything in a field that is already fragile for so many, or to be someone who makes the landscape harder for others. I was first involved in this world when GoodReads was brand-spanking new, and disappeared in about 2014 because of general life. Things were hard enough in that early decade. It’s gotten even harder, and so I don’t want to take more than I give or be a burden.
So I left the group and went off to lick my wounds and deleted my posts advertising my book. I didn’t take screenshots since I don’t make a habit of archiving conversations unless I’m already planning to share them, like in the case of Darling (and even then, I delayed long enough that I was banned before finishing and someone else had to get the rest for me). And honestly, even if I had snapped some receipts, I doubt I’d have posted them. Burning bridges in the writing world feels bad enough when it’s fictional characters doing the arson. I don’t need to do it in real life.
But now I’m left with a dilemma I didn’t anticipate: What the hell do I do with this book?
Do I shelve it like they suggested, so it’s not just more “noise” in an already-overcrowded field? Do I quietly publish it without saying a word and hope it doesn’t add more litter on top of what readers actually want when searching for books? Something else? If we are to have a writing community, that means no one person should be all that matters. It has to be about the collective. Community. Commune.
And just in case anyone is thinking that I am making too big of a deal out of this because it’s just one book and who cares, well, each of those numerable AI slot books being posted every day is just one book. Look what happens when you take all those one books and put them together. You don’t throw trash out the window on the freeway just because it’s just one thing for the same reason. One is still one, and the ones add up.
It’s been such a fight to even finish this book finished and bring it this far, just for it to get dropkicked again, and for there to be agreement. The difference between earlier and now is in who stands to be harmed, no matter how slight.
I care deeply about this field and this community and the stories that come out of it, even mine, even though no on else does (and I’m not entitled to anyone caring—I know that). I want my stories to have a chance to breathe, but I don’t want to harm this community. Now that I know that writing in a genre so niche that there aren’t readers for it results in books that are akin to litter, I don’t know what to do. I have two days left to decide. Otherwise the upload deadline will be past and that’ll be the decision.
If anyone has Reed this far and wants to give anonymous input, I made this little Google form. You can say whatever you want to know about me and I won’t know who you are.