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inverarityAQ update at the bottom, so skip past all this nonsense if that's all you're here for.
If you read online author/writing circlejerks on Twitter, Facebook, reddit, etc. you have probably seen the latest "controversies" swirling around about publishing. First, is The Great Gatsby the Great American Novel or a boring tedious rich people drama inflicted on generations of high school students by teachers who want to make them hate reading?
This iteration started with Brad Torgersen posting this:
Brad Torgersen is one of the original Sad Puppies and a right-winger, so people pretty much lined up along tribal lines to defend or attack his opinion.
I don't know who "Veronica" is, but this is about the level of engagement the argument quickly devolved into: mostly male and right-leaning twitterati declaring that indeed, The Great Gatsby is boring and stupid and the only reason anyone reads it is that it was shipped to troops stationed overseas in large numbers and now generations of high school teachers have made kids read it instead of good stuff like Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert Heinlein. A lot of dunking on public education and teachers, and not-so-thinly veiled disdain for women, on the presumption that they prevent boys from reading boy stuff.
And on the other side, people like Veronica sneering at boys who'd rather read adventure fiction than lit-ra-chure.
Well.
First of all, I have not read The Great Gatsby. Somehow I escaped it in my assigned reading in high school. (It's now on my TBR list because I want to evaluate it for myself.) But while I greatly dislike the smug, condescending attitude of Veronicas, I think all the fans boasting about how they read Lord of the Rings under their desks while pretending to read whatever had been assigned to them are also wrong in a number of ways.
First of all, there is value in reading "difficult" books, and even books that are not "fun." This isn't just an "Eat your vegetables" perspective. I get the argument that forcing kids to read books they don't like will kill their love of reading. It is very hard for me to say how seriously to take this, because I was an avid reader literally before I even started school, and I was reading adult novels well before high school. (I read James Clavell's Shogun in sixth grade. I thought the torture and the freaky sex was weird and a little disturbing. There's a whole page about medieval Japanese dildos... But the samurai and ninja were cool.) So being forced to read books I didn't like wouldn't have been enough to kill my reading tastes. But if you're a teenager who doesn't really love reading in the first place, would being made to read The Great Gatsby instead of Jedi Academy turn you into a lifelong non-reader?
Well, I do think kids should be made to read some literature. Difficult books, books that are core to our cultural canon, and books that introduce ideas, themes, and history that may be unfamiliar to them. Books written from a point of view, and in writing styles, that may not be familiar to them. That is part of education. We expect students to learn math and science and history even if they don't find those subjects "fun." Obviously it is preferable to present subjects to them in a manner that will hopefully be engaging, enjoyable, and convince them of the value of what they're being made to learn. But sometimes you study things because to be a functional educated adult in our society, you should know things. And the literature that has formed the foundations of our culture is part of that.
Of course English class is a lot more subjective than math or science class. In the US, English teachers usually have a lot of latitude in choosing what books will be required reading. Some schools, and some states, have standards that dictate certain titles or authors, but no two classes are going to have exactly the same lists.
I was very fortunate. I went to public school in California, back when California public schools were actually good. (Don't laugh: this is true! California's education system was once the model for the nation.) I took AP English and our teacher assigned us a lot of the usual classics: Dickens, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Hardy, Flaubert, etc. I hated Madame Bovary. I can appreciate it now for what it was, but I think a story about a bored 19th century French housewife ruining her life with fantasy can't really connect with a teenager and so it's not a book I personally would put on a high school reading list. But our teacher also liked science fiction, so she had us read Childhood's End, A Canticle for Leibowitz, and Earth Abides.
Maybe the experience of other students was different and they had less diverse reading lists, but I think that being exposed to something outside my usual range (I was already reading almost exclusively SF and fantasy on my own) broadened my horizons, and when I began adding classics and literary novels again to my reading as an adult, it made me a much broader reader who caught references that someone who only ever wants to read genre will miss. The attitude of some of the Torgersens and Correias is basically "Why should boys ever be expected to read anything but Exciting! Boy! Adventures? They don't need any of that feminine literary crap, wtf is a 'theme' even?"
Like, c'mon guys. I can see today what happens when you encounter readers who never read anything but comic books, litrpgs, and fan fiction. They bounce right off anything with complex sentence structures, difficult themes, or a plot that takes more then two pages for shit to blow up.
A lot of genre authors (and readers) are defensive over the perception that for decades, genre fiction has been looked down upon by publishing, by literary critics, by "real" authors. The story of taking a writing class and being sneered at when you admit to wanting to write sci-fi is a common one. Long ago, this was "nerd shit." But is it really true now? I don't think so, not so much. And y'all need to admit that Dickens and Flaubert and yes, maybe even Fitzgerald, had something to say to you today.
This is why whenever I talk to fellow fans, I will die on the hill of insisting you should read stuff outside your favorite genres now and then. And that you don't have to "enjoy" everything you read to get something out of it.
Somewhat related, another author went viral for this Tweet:
Note the response. I will get to that.
Now, I don't know who John A. Douglas is. Apparently he's also in that right-aligned authorsphere, so his hot take is not unexpected. (He's an indie-published author with some kind of D&Dish orc book? I may give it a try on KU.)
But, ya know, he's not completely wrong. "Modern publishing hates male readers" strikes me as a bit of a persecution complex, but most of the retorts online pointed out that women make up most of the book-buying public today, so of course publishing is going to cater to their tastes. And this is true but it's not the whole story. There were some arguments about whether publishing "should" try to reach out to boys, whether failing to appeal to male readers is leaving money on the table, or whether no, it's boys and men who should broaden their horizons and read more fiction by and about women. The argument there is that girls have had to read boy-focused books forever so why shouldn't boys read more female POV books now?
Fair point (I say, as a dude who writes a series from a girl's POV), but I would argue that Alexandra Quick is not a particularly "female" story but has attracted an audience of both male and female readers because it's just an adventure series whose protagonist happens to be female. Much of what dominates the genre market today is "romantasy." Can we just be honest and say that's a romance subgenre that only appeals to women? (Yes, yes, I know that's not literally true, I'm sure there are a handful of male romantasy fans.) Even outside of romantasy, much of what is published in SF and fantasy today is by or for a female perspective. Pointing this out frequently draws accusations of misogyny and male tears, but look, telling guys who don't find these books appealing "The problem is you: you need to change your reading tastes!" is... not a winning marketing strategy.
"jelloannaa's" retort, that men should read A Court of Thorns and Roses, just completely misses the point. Look, lots of women don't like Lord of the Rings. Fine. But lots do. I'm going to controversially suggest that, if we narrow both male and female readers down to those who actually like the fantasy genre, the proportion of women who would like Lord of the Rings is far greater than the proportion of men who would like A Court of Thorns and Roses. Because LotR may have a lot of signifiers of "male fiction": it's a band of brothers adventure novel with grand sweeping military engagements and kingdoms and stuff, and there are only a handful of female characters who have a few iconic scenes but are mostly secondary. But it's still a story that appeals to everyone! Meanwhile, I'm just gonna say it: while I have not read ACOTAR, every summary I've read indicates a very, very female-centric romantic fantasy that has little to appeal to any man who doesn't have quite unusual tastes. The "fantasy" worldbuilding appears to be a veneer over your basic "Plain girl becomes the love interest of multiple hot brooding dangerous men" storyline. We. Just. Don't. Like. That. Stuff. And I've read romances! But men who look at what's on the shelves and say "This isn't for me" are not saying "Eww, girl cooties!" but are treated as if they are.
It's unfortunate that much of the whining comes from the manosphere- a bunch of guys who genuinely do despise women and anything with girl cooties on it. But in my fleeting interactions with the publishing industry and writing communities, it's evident to me that the whining has some basis in fact. Anything that might appeal too much to male tastes is treated as an embarrassment, something to be reluctantly tolerated but not encouraged. And too often you see people like Veronica and jelloanna who resort to browbeating the audience for having the wrong tastes.
Also, ya know, "BookTok slop" is a real thing.
Like, "Books have too many words?" Wut?
The Alexandra Quick and the Wizard War ebook is now updated with a new cover from Bordraw, who made the previous Alexandra Quick ebook covers.
As for Alexandra Quick and the End of Time, I have added a few words, but not many. I am stuck on a major plot point and I've been pondering it for a while now, sketching out and discarding idea, using various brainstorming schemes, and have yet to figure out a way to execute it in the way I need to, and the rest of the story will not make sense unless I do.
This happens to me a lot when writing, and I don't understand what it is about my plotting style that causes this. Other authors seem to be able to plow through their story and just make stuff happen. I can't figure out how to make A happen before B and fit C into D and it grinds me to a halt for days or weeks. And this being the last book, I am well aware that everything needs to come together now! So I am not suffering "writer's block," more like a "writer's obstacle."
"Required Reading"
If you read online author/writing circlejerks on Twitter, Facebook, reddit, etc. you have probably seen the latest "controversies" swirling around about publishing. First, is The Great Gatsby the Great American Novel or a boring tedious rich people drama inflicted on generations of high school students by teachers who want to make them hate reading?
This iteration started with Brad Torgersen posting this:
Arguably one of the worst books to be selected by America's highschools; to enshrine as a "must read" in various English classes. It did not age well past its era, nor its East Coast audience. The problems and people are all tedious. The equivalent of modern Martha's Vineyard… https://t.co/STgSwY9tEt
— Brad R. Torgersen (@BradRTorgersen) March 9, 2025
Brad Torgersen is one of the original Sad Puppies and a right-winger, so people pretty much lined up along tribal lines to defend or attack his opinion.
I don't know who "Veronica" is, but this is about the level of engagement the argument quickly devolved into: mostly male and right-leaning twitterati declaring that indeed, The Great Gatsby is boring and stupid and the only reason anyone reads it is that it was shipped to troops stationed overseas in large numbers and now generations of high school teachers have made kids read it instead of good stuff like Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert Heinlein. A lot of dunking on public education and teachers, and not-so-thinly veiled disdain for women, on the presumption that they prevent boys from reading boy stuff.
And on the other side, people like Veronica sneering at boys who'd rather read adventure fiction than lit-ra-chure.
Well.
First of all, I have not read The Great Gatsby. Somehow I escaped it in my assigned reading in high school. (It's now on my TBR list because I want to evaluate it for myself.) But while I greatly dislike the smug, condescending attitude of Veronicas, I think all the fans boasting about how they read Lord of the Rings under their desks while pretending to read whatever had been assigned to them are also wrong in a number of ways.
First of all, there is value in reading "difficult" books, and even books that are not "fun." This isn't just an "Eat your vegetables" perspective. I get the argument that forcing kids to read books they don't like will kill their love of reading. It is very hard for me to say how seriously to take this, because I was an avid reader literally before I even started school, and I was reading adult novels well before high school. (I read James Clavell's Shogun in sixth grade. I thought the torture and the freaky sex was weird and a little disturbing. There's a whole page about medieval Japanese dildos... But the samurai and ninja were cool.) So being forced to read books I didn't like wouldn't have been enough to kill my reading tastes. But if you're a teenager who doesn't really love reading in the first place, would being made to read The Great Gatsby instead of Jedi Academy turn you into a lifelong non-reader?
Well, I do think kids should be made to read some literature. Difficult books, books that are core to our cultural canon, and books that introduce ideas, themes, and history that may be unfamiliar to them. Books written from a point of view, and in writing styles, that may not be familiar to them. That is part of education. We expect students to learn math and science and history even if they don't find those subjects "fun." Obviously it is preferable to present subjects to them in a manner that will hopefully be engaging, enjoyable, and convince them of the value of what they're being made to learn. But sometimes you study things because to be a functional educated adult in our society, you should know things. And the literature that has formed the foundations of our culture is part of that.
Of course English class is a lot more subjective than math or science class. In the US, English teachers usually have a lot of latitude in choosing what books will be required reading. Some schools, and some states, have standards that dictate certain titles or authors, but no two classes are going to have exactly the same lists.
I was very fortunate. I went to public school in California, back when California public schools were actually good. (Don't laugh: this is true! California's education system was once the model for the nation.) I took AP English and our teacher assigned us a lot of the usual classics: Dickens, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Hardy, Flaubert, etc. I hated Madame Bovary. I can appreciate it now for what it was, but I think a story about a bored 19th century French housewife ruining her life with fantasy can't really connect with a teenager and so it's not a book I personally would put on a high school reading list. But our teacher also liked science fiction, so she had us read Childhood's End, A Canticle for Leibowitz, and Earth Abides.
Maybe the experience of other students was different and they had less diverse reading lists, but I think that being exposed to something outside my usual range (I was already reading almost exclusively SF and fantasy on my own) broadened my horizons, and when I began adding classics and literary novels again to my reading as an adult, it made me a much broader reader who caught references that someone who only ever wants to read genre will miss. The attitude of some of the Torgersens and Correias is basically "Why should boys ever be expected to read anything but Exciting! Boy! Adventures? They don't need any of that feminine literary crap, wtf is a 'theme' even?"
Like, c'mon guys. I can see today what happens when you encounter readers who never read anything but comic books, litrpgs, and fan fiction. They bounce right off anything with complex sentence structures, difficult themes, or a plot that takes more then two pages for shit to blow up.
A lot of genre authors (and readers) are defensive over the perception that for decades, genre fiction has been looked down upon by publishing, by literary critics, by "real" authors. The story of taking a writing class and being sneered at when you admit to wanting to write sci-fi is a common one. Long ago, this was "nerd shit." But is it really true now? I don't think so, not so much. And y'all need to admit that Dickens and Flaubert and yes, maybe even Fitzgerald, had something to say to you today.
This is why whenever I talk to fellow fans, I will die on the hill of insisting you should read stuff outside your favorite genres now and then. And that you don't have to "enjoy" everything you read to get something out of it.
Publishing's Anti-Male Bias
Somewhat related, another author went viral for this Tweet:
we read lord of the rings but yall can’t read a court of thorns and roses?????
— jelloannaa (@jelloannaa) March 22, 2025
Note the response. I will get to that.
Now, I don't know who John A. Douglas is. Apparently he's also in that right-aligned authorsphere, so his hot take is not unexpected. (He's an indie-published author with some kind of D&Dish orc book? I may give it a try on KU.)
But, ya know, he's not completely wrong. "Modern publishing hates male readers" strikes me as a bit of a persecution complex, but most of the retorts online pointed out that women make up most of the book-buying public today, so of course publishing is going to cater to their tastes. And this is true but it's not the whole story. There were some arguments about whether publishing "should" try to reach out to boys, whether failing to appeal to male readers is leaving money on the table, or whether no, it's boys and men who should broaden their horizons and read more fiction by and about women. The argument there is that girls have had to read boy-focused books forever so why shouldn't boys read more female POV books now?
Fair point (I say, as a dude who writes a series from a girl's POV), but I would argue that Alexandra Quick is not a particularly "female" story but has attracted an audience of both male and female readers because it's just an adventure series whose protagonist happens to be female. Much of what dominates the genre market today is "romantasy." Can we just be honest and say that's a romance subgenre that only appeals to women? (Yes, yes, I know that's not literally true, I'm sure there are a handful of male romantasy fans.) Even outside of romantasy, much of what is published in SF and fantasy today is by or for a female perspective. Pointing this out frequently draws accusations of misogyny and male tears, but look, telling guys who don't find these books appealing "The problem is you: you need to change your reading tastes!" is... not a winning marketing strategy.
"jelloannaa's" retort, that men should read A Court of Thorns and Roses, just completely misses the point. Look, lots of women don't like Lord of the Rings. Fine. But lots do. I'm going to controversially suggest that, if we narrow both male and female readers down to those who actually like the fantasy genre, the proportion of women who would like Lord of the Rings is far greater than the proportion of men who would like A Court of Thorns and Roses. Because LotR may have a lot of signifiers of "male fiction": it's a band of brothers adventure novel with grand sweeping military engagements and kingdoms and stuff, and there are only a handful of female characters who have a few iconic scenes but are mostly secondary. But it's still a story that appeals to everyone! Meanwhile, I'm just gonna say it: while I have not read ACOTAR, every summary I've read indicates a very, very female-centric romantic fantasy that has little to appeal to any man who doesn't have quite unusual tastes. The "fantasy" worldbuilding appears to be a veneer over your basic "Plain girl becomes the love interest of multiple hot brooding dangerous men" storyline. We. Just. Don't. Like. That. Stuff. And I've read romances! But men who look at what's on the shelves and say "This isn't for me" are not saying "Eww, girl cooties!" but are treated as if they are.
It's unfortunate that much of the whining comes from the manosphere- a bunch of guys who genuinely do despise women and anything with girl cooties on it. But in my fleeting interactions with the publishing industry and writing communities, it's evident to me that the whining has some basis in fact. Anything that might appeal too much to male tastes is treated as an embarrassment, something to be reluctantly tolerated but not encouraged. And too often you see people like Veronica and jelloanna who resort to browbeating the audience for having the wrong tastes.
Also, ya know, "BookTok slop" is a real thing.
Like, "Books have too many words?" Wut?
Alexandra Quick and the Wizard War ebook
The Alexandra Quick and the Wizard War ebook is now updated with a new cover from Bordraw, who made the previous Alexandra Quick ebook covers.
As for Alexandra Quick and the End of Time, I have added a few words, but not many. I am stuck on a major plot point and I've been pondering it for a while now, sketching out and discarding idea, using various brainstorming schemes, and have yet to figure out a way to execute it in the way I need to, and the rest of the story will not make sense unless I do.
This happens to me a lot when writing, and I don't understand what it is about my plotting style that causes this. Other authors seem to be able to plow through their story and just make stuff happen. I can't figure out how to make A happen before B and fit C into D and it grinds me to a halt for days or weeks. And this being the last book, I am well aware that everything needs to come together now! So I am not suffering "writer's block," more like a "writer's obstacle."
