I am going to say my piece, then I'm gonna move on.

In 2012, *I* was that newly agented writer with very naive dreams of what publishing would be like. Agents and editors saw enough merit in my works to be interested in me.

What I wasn't expecting were other writers' dislike.

"she's not even American, tho" was one of the first subtweets about me. (They were fine with British authors tho.) I saw librarians and bloggers questioning whether my book and my English were up to par before ARCs were even out.

I managed through. I told myself this was fine, criticism is to be expected now that I'm getting published. People are allowed not to like my work.

But people weren't even reading my works. What they didn't like was me, and the space I was occupying at their table.

It wasn't just writers. The worst of the abuses started when the cover of THE BONE WITCH, which was gearing up to be my breakout book, was up on Netgalley, and apparently it 'broke' the system because it was pretty enough that too many people were clicking on it.

Suddenly "this book doesn't deserve this pretty cover". A group of white bloggers started 1-starring my book because it had a love triangle. And then, when they learned it didn't, 1-starred it because I misled them about it. That this wasn't 'authentic' bc no one was white.

The WORST was when a white queer author accused me publicly here on Twitter of being racist and misogynistic. That my villains (in an all-POC book) were POC. That I was stereotyping gays (he misgendered a character).

And then woke Twitter converged on me.

(clarification: I believe he was an author, but not trad published. I think he was a book reviewer, mainly)

You have no idea how it felt like, to be constantly tagged in mentions while everyone discussed TO MY FACE whether or not the accusations were accurate, if my book deserved stoning. I felt like I was on trial.

Most in the discussions admitted to not having even read my book yet.

I was eventually absolved. Like the acquittal was actually a good thing, instead of furthering the trauma.

Much later, I traveled to the US for book cons. One well-meaning writer asked me, "which god did you sacrifice to, to get such pretty covers?"

I mumbled something. I don't even remember my answer. Because what I really wanted to say was "my pride. my feelings of loneliness that, even here being surrounded by writers like you, finally getting acknowledged, I still feel like I don't belong because of shit that happened."

There have been more incidents since then. I won't go into any more details with those. This is about the limit I'm willing to give.

But I can tell you the exact moment when people started taking me seriously.

It's when I started getting very, very loud about shit.

I didn't want to. But at that point I thought "I was going to get slammed even when I don't speak up anyway. So may as well blow my shit and take flack for that as well."

And now? I see these new writers just where I was then, and nothing has really changed on here.

More pushes for diversity? Sure. Taking care of the new people who might not know what they're getting into? With mentor programs, yes. But as a general rule? Well.

I don't have any close friend circles here. I hate author cliques. And I... just got tired of all that shit.

I am not doing this to pat myself on the back. I just want to ask authors - established authors, white authors, the same authors who ignored what happened to me the same way they ignored Emily Duncan, continued interacting with her still - you should be tired of shit, too.

So if I am defensive on here, or why I jump on issues I'm not a part of just because I think it's unfair, or why I did this when I'm not close with anyone involved - maybe I just see in them echoes of what I went through myself.

I'm angry. And I'm angry about being angry. /fin

I meant **ignored the people Emily Duncan harassed**, lol They didn't ignore Duncan, they just ignored her harassment https://twitter.com/RinChupeco/status/1379571612903636993?s=20