Happy new year!
For those of you who are long-time followers of this blog, you probably noticed you got a few weird emails and notifications that linked to weird pages or blog posts that were actually test pages. That’s because the website has been undergoing massive revisions to reflect some changes in the way I’m delivering my books to readers.
Apologies for the inconvenience. WordPress, the platform this site is built on, does have a setting that allows you to hide the site under a “Coming Soon” page while you work on pages, but this setting was interfering with some of the ability to do custom CSS tests and the like. Everything is now in (mostly) working order and ready for relaunch!
The major thing you’ll notice is that I have removed all previous books and creative works, and I replaced them with a landing page for The Fire of Felwing series. Long story very short, I had a peaceful departure from the series’ previous publisher and decided to give my stories directly to readers with a “pay what you want” structure. Of the many reasons I’ve decided to go this route, one major reason is accessibility.
Accessibility means a few different things here. By offering my book in this way, people who may not have the resources to afford books, or who may not live near a library, have access to the story. People who utilize assistive tech (AT) to engage with stories can do so as well; please get in touch with me on my Contact Page if my site disagrees with your AT, as I may be able to control some of that on my end. Lastly, in the United States (and indeed, in many places around the globe, for whatever reason), the stories that I write—stories featuring rainbow characters*—are being actively censored and erased. So these books are literally unable to reach folks in this community if they live in one of these places. Until the internet is actively censored in all of these jurisdictions (and I recognize there are some nations out there that do this already), my work will be hosted online in an attempt to circumvent these fascist attempts to erase the rainbow community.
Right now, the site is in its close-to-final form. Additional polish may be applied in certain areas, but the core functionality and navigation are active.
You’ll notice that The Fire of Felwing is now available to read. Chapter 1 of Book One, Flicker, has been posted. Since the first two books of the series were previously published, these chapters should be coming very steadily; the plan is to release one chapter per week, although I plan to have chapters 2 and 3 up sooner than that, just as a launching point.
[Update! Chapter 1 is also available on Royal Road.]
Readers with the means to do so can also choose to support me in two ways: through WordPress, or through Ko-Fi. This can be done as one-offs, monthly pledges, or yearly pledges. Currently, supporters do not have access to extra perks. The plan is not to make the core story hidden behind a paywall. Extra perks are in the roadmap, but will not impact overall accessibility.
Also in the plan are keepsake versions of the books once their last update is posted. More on this as we draw nearer to the conclusion of Flicker.
That about sums up the recent happenings here. Follow or subscribe to this blog for free to receive more updates as they come!
Warmly,
Liz
* Regarding “rainbow” over the acronyms “LGBTQIA+” and “LGBTQIA2S+”: I feel this designation includes identities that are not yet recognized in either acronym. At times on this website, I may use those acronyms so that search engines can find this content and get it to the correct audience. Regardless, the rainbow community is not a monolith, and the experiences, thoughts, discourse, and more for each community and individual within the rainbow are all different.
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