Welcome to my profile! Add this book to your library for profile updates beyond what I announce:
❖ Progress reports on my ongoing projects
❖ Announcements of new things I'm writing behind the scenes
❖ Rambling about anything from queer rep to c...
So, I've got good news and bad news. And because they're both happening around the same time, I'm just gonna group them together into a single post.
Bad news first.
Some of you may have seen my Wattpad announcement about text-to-speech already—if so, you may skip to the ❖❖❖ page break further down this chapter! I'm cross-posting that announcement here because I use this book to keep a log of profile updates regardless, so I wanted to save a copy.
The bad news is that Wattpad has discontinued their text-to-speech program. Books that have it will keep it (at least for now) but it can't be added to new books anymore.
For those who don't know, text-to-speech (TTS) is a type of assistive technology that reads digital text aloud. It's useful for anyone with visual, reading, or even attention difficulties, especially when it comes to reading on a screen. Or just anyone who likes multitasking while listening to audiobooks! In 2021-22, Wattpad ran an experiment where they added TTS to thousands of English stories on Wattpad, with the intent to find out how it improved the Wattpad reading experience. That experiment, without prior notice, has now been discontinued. Wattpad's help-desk page for TTS (linked in a comment on this paragraph) states, "Currently, there are no plans to release this feature more widely, but this is something that might be revisited in the future."
This is frustrating to me, as I know many of my readers use and love this feature, and I've gotten it added to every book on my profile thus far. The upside is that those books still have it—everything except It's Cold Upstairs and City of Coral, both of which I requested TTS for earlier this fall, but which must not have made it in under the "experiment" deadline. The downside is that, well, no new books of mine will get the feature. This includes everything past book two (Song of the Deep) of my ongoing Kels series, though the first two books still have it.
If any of you get Wattpad's user experience surveys, take the chance to make some noise about this! You can also spread the word to your own friends and followers. If HQ sees a demand, chances are higher they'll bring back the feature. Until then, we'll have to make do with what we've got... not ideal, but at least they haven't removed it from books that already have it yet.
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On to the good news!
Completely unrelated to TTS, it has come to my attention that December is the opposite month in the year from June, and that it would give me joy to post Pride-related things in December as a result. Because celebrating all things queer all year? The answer is yes. I've been sitting on a number of queer-themed blog posts for some time now, and recently added another that I'd love to post sooner rather than later, so this is definitely not self-serving on my part, nope, not at all.
And so I'm planning a mini blog series related to queer representation in writing throughout the month of December, with topics including (in no particular order):
❖ Creative queer rep in Fantasy
❖ How to identify queer characters in settings that lack language for their identities
❖ Logistical tips I've found for writing a character with they/them pronouns in third person
❖ The usefulness and shortcomings of "Just write a person and then make them queer"
❖ My experience writing my own role models when my relationship to my own queer identity has been somewhat fraught
If you're interested in any of these or more like them, add this book to your library or stay tuned for my announcements throughout the month of December!
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