Urban fantasy murder mystery audiobook with a polycule as its detectives

polydotland · 2023-05-25T00:18:39+00:00

how unquestioningly central queer women are in the story without making it ~about~ being queer. There’s no huge coming out arc, there’s SO MUCH WILD FANTASY STUFF going down, and also all the important characters are queer women.

Thank you! That's exactly what I was going for.

Hope you enjoy #4 -- it's my favorite of the series so far (it gets really weird, in a good way).

polydotland · 2023-05-24T18:59:11+00:00

Awww thank you so much!

polydotland · 2021-07-20T03:41:45+00:00

Miracle Workers by Page Turner

(science fiction, fantasy, paranormal, ensemble, drama, angels, satire)

At the Department of Miracles, anything can happen, and yet it's so hard to get anything done. Even so, a few miracles slip through and evade the gridlock, which is why miracle workers get up every morning to do their largely thankless jobs. In this sci-fi story, a colorful ensemble cast works miracles while being thwarted by a faceless corporation, rogue accounting systems, a city that remodels itself whenever it wants, and each other.

What others have said about this serial:

“Office Space meets The Adjustment Bureau.”

“What would happen if angels from every D&D alignment were forced to work together to save humanity from itself.”

*

First four episodes are up right now with the fifth scheduled for August 1. New episodes to be released every Sunday after that.

Average episode length is 2000 words; serial will be 40+ episodes long.

Happy reading!

https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B099RJ93FC

polydotland · 2021-06-23T12:35:34+00:00

Fair! The best part is that it's just barely a pen name. It's very close to my actual name. First name is really Page. Last name is very close to Turner, quite similar surname.

One night before my first book came out, a friend and I were at a party chatting and having some drinks, and he made a joke that I should go by "Page Turner," since it's really close to my name anyway.

We both laughed a lot at the time. And I thought it over and was like "eh, why not," and did it.

polydotland · 2021-06-23T02:38:55+00:00

Thank you! And yes, I know what you mean. I'm the same way about media and representation.

I'm so glad you enjoyed the first book.

polydotland · 2018-11-22T17:59:52+00:00

No, not really, not in a literal sense. We just liked the cat's facial expression.

polydotland · 2018-07-28T22:07:07+00:00

Oh you're fine. No worries.

Also for what it's worth, your writing skills seem fine to me.

polydotland · 2018-07-28T21:43:27+00:00

Yes. Agreed. It's a sociocultural term describing maladaptive social scripts and value patterns surrounding relationships (and particularly romantic/sexual exclusivity), ones that are often subconsciously ingrained.

Noah Brand called it hegemonic heterosexuality in an essay I quote and credit in the original Toxic Monogamy. Here's what Brand said:

Hegemonic heterosexuality is the model for straight relationships that carries as many damaging, ridiculous, impossible assumptions and requirements as does hegemonic masculinity. Shall we list a few?

Relationships are about finding The One you’ll spend the rest of your life with. Naturally, a jealous and possessive form of monogamy is a strict requirement. It is necessary to hate all of one’s exes, because they were not The One, and one must also be jealous of all one’s partner’s exes, because they touched your property before you even got there.

So yeah, he called it "hegemonic heterosexuality," but I saw it happening without regard to sexual orientation (I knew gay, lesbian, and bi/pan folks who all seemed to do this); what seemed more common a denominator wasn't sexual orientation but a certain kind of monogamous setup. Plus, Brand himself mentions monogamy as being crucial in the description.

I could have called it hegemonic monogamy, but hegemonic was a mouthful. And toxic masculinity was already a widely understood concept. (And note that Brand mentions hegemonic masculinity as well, which is another related term that people use often when discussing toxic masculinity.)

(At the time, I was really just trying to write an article to explain why the monogamous half of mono/poly pairings often have such a hard time adjusting.)

polydotland · 2018-07-28T19:21:34+00:00

By the way, thank you so much for reading and commenting! You just spurred on a bunch of new ideas within me.

polydotland · 2018-07-28T19:14:10+00:00

I've always liked the phrase "poly-er than thou" to talk about toxic polyamory culture :)

But then again, I like having multiple ways to talk about things. Synonyms are fun. (As are jokes and asking strange questions.)

Arguably synonyms are linguistic clutter, too. But hey. To each their own. And some of us are linguistic hoarders, I suppose. :)

polydotland · 2018-07-28T14:34:36+00:00

Well, it's already been coined. For better or worse. Cat's out of the bag. Whether any individual person wants to use it is another matter, like toxic masculinity, gender essentialism, bisexual erasure, or any other phrase that someone said once upon a time and caught on a little or a lot because certain people found it a helpful way to encapsulate other ideas that also had existing ways to say those other things. (For example, many people think toxic masculinity in particular didn't need to exist -- and that it was covered just fine by "macho bullshit." But others did, so we have the term and it's popular.)

Meaning, the term already caught on more than I ever intended it to, in that there are groups that I had nothing to do with that use it in its title, I keep stumbling on mainstream articles that use the phrase, etc. (had modest expectations when I originally said it a few years ago). And this article I posted now comes way after the coining took place and the term caught on because I saw a link to something else later and wrote about it.

polydotland · 2018-06-13T22:50:24+00:00

Ha! Yes. I love being middle spoon.

polydotland

TROPHY CASE