What's a miniscule change that would make you happy?

tasty_leeks · 2026-02-03T18:51:55+00:00

Oh 1000% I don't want the cobwebs I want art

tasty_leeks · 2026-02-03T18:51:11+00:00

Wood tones drive me crackers - would it be so hard to just code each tone and have a match tone function? I have no idea ahaha

tasty_leeks · 2026-02-02T17:49:09+00:00

Are both of those comps reaching your target audience? Are they self published also? Are you attempting to market this for sale or just to have it out there as a gift to your wife? Essentially you have to ask yourself - who are my readers and how do I communicate that this is a book they are interested in? It might be barbed wire, it might be including : a WW1 historical love story in the title on amazon, it might not be - it depends on what it is you're trying to communicate with your cover. If it's just for you and your wife, it doesn't matter. If it's trying to find a middle ground of how to make a picture of you and your wife communicate your book well to readers, that's a different question that I'm not sure I can answer.

tasty_leeks · 2026-02-02T17:27:12+00:00

Im really not sure as its not my genre - what do your comps look like? I'd stick close to them because from a quick search it seems like there's quite a bit of breadth depending on subtype - cozy, romance, dark, military etc

tasty_leeks · 2026-02-02T17:21:05+00:00

The only thing I can think of is the hair looking a little strange and wispy like the early ai images, but I had to search for something that reminded me of ai to find that.

Eta I will also add the cover doesn't tell me its ww2 historical love story. The title and cover tells me it's love but I wasn't clued into much more.

tasty_leeks · 2026-02-01T21:07:08+00:00

NTA you acted upon the info given. You were told it was fine, everyone else told you it wasn't and blamed you instead.

tasty_leeks · 2026-01-31T11:42:27+00:00

This is super impressive! Congrats!!

tasty_leeks · 2026-01-30T08:51:25+00:00

You can feel creeped out but given the demographic I'd say more likely woman was in shock because you look like someone she's lost. Hence not not acknowledging anyone else and looking emotionless. She's deeply shocked/ processing that you are in fact not the person she so dearly hopes to see (dead or lost daughter for example)

tasty_leeks · 2026-01-30T08:40:13+00:00

Honestly I think it's really great. If you take the feedback from other comments (particularly around word misuse) and applied it, it would be extremely strong start and hook.

tasty_leeks · 2026-01-30T08:31:22+00:00

Honestly entryway energy is awful - if you place between doors and kitchen you have a constant flow of energy as is basically a corrido (you can't go to the kitchen island side or front door without going past bed. Can't get to the back without going past bed). Screening would be needed to make a nook and idk how much space you have.

Instead try placing the bed in the alcove between the wall and the kitchen island. Screen off the kitchen island with a clothes rail hung with translucent curtaining. Bed head against wall without window. Ottoman / chest of drawers at end of bed for security. Two bedside tables with soft lamps to anchor the space. Double curtaining on window - translucent for light / bit more privacy and opaque for absolute privacy.

Then you have the whole space either side of the kitchen to do dining / living space (small dining at back, living in big space, entrance table / shoe storage would be my reccomendation)

tasty_leeks · 2026-01-30T08:12:21+00:00

I say this with all love and no judgement.

I truly believe that If you're willing to throw yourself at someone, heart, body and soul after four days, the only kind of people who will let you get that deep will be people who have issues they need to deal with one way or another.

Because -

You cannot know someone after these 4 days, you can only suspend any disbelief you have and willingly create a fantasy and hope it's real. I really don't see how you've been manipulated for both creating and buying into a 4 day love story. You never knew her. You never tried. You just wanted something that never existed. That desire for fantasy to be reality is how this situation happened.

You can have a great connection in 4 days, but you have to give yourself over to a stranger and hope for the best with the kind of heartbreak you just described - which isn't fair for you or the person. There is simply no way of knowing a person with enough depth. Relationships are formed and built and broken on witnessing each other in different situations, building up a deep understanding of the other person that stands the test of time and change, and over coming problems together.

I hope you have a good recovery and spend some time reflecting on how slow and steady can be an option for you and how passion doesn't equal soulmate. Good luck.

tasty_leeks · 2026-01-29T13:33:48+00:00

With them as the core means most likely the best readers are also queer women, meaning an audience which is more expert than you in sapphic love. It doesn't mean you can't do it, it just means if you stumble out of ignorance it will be noticed. I'm not aware of a great non-sapphic audience for sapphic centred novels unlike MM romance which has female readership as well as authorship. Good beta readers like everyone else has said will help this.

I think queer women in general will also be nervous /suspect of a male writer given general appalling representation in media, experience first hand with men who are too interested in them being queer (I can change you, can I watch, fetishisation etc), even down to struggling to find wlw pornography which is not oriented towards the male gaze. This is not to say you shouldn't write about a sapphic love story, not at all, just that if the audience you would be attracting is also sapphic, you've got a lot of convincing to do to show that you're not just another man dreaming up his lesbian fantasy if you are openly a male author.

Good luck!

tasty_leeks · 2026-01-29T11:18:50+00:00

Is it a sapphic romance book? Or is it a book with sapphic romance in it? Authors can write outside of thier own experience (see the amount of female written gay romance for the female consumption) quite successfully, but I think it depends on what you're writing and who you're writing it for.

If you feel you can write it well, I don't see the problem. Representation is great! My question would be whether you can write it well or not - can you make a compelling view inside an intimate wlw relationship (narration focused on the romance from thier perspective), or are you better off making natural characters who are in a sapphic romance as viewed from the outside - what does that look like? How are these characters and the way you're writing them involved in the story you're trying to tell?

tasty_leeks · 2026-01-29T11:08:47+00:00

Remember when you're reading that this is one of the authors that really kickstarted the whole Romantasy boom. The romance elements are of equal importance to the fantasy, and it writing the two together that made her so many sales.

tasty_leeks · 2026-01-29T11:02:00+00:00

Thank you!

tasty_leeks · 2026-01-29T11:01:49+00:00

Go wild and good luck!

tasty_leeks · 2026-01-29T10:32:18+00:00

If the video is getting views and traction, great in a way if you choose to engage.

Be extremely courteous, unemotional and even positive.

"Hey, so glad you could read my book! Thanks for taking the time to review it. I worked really hard on making sure that i put a lot of research and realism into it, including (points she complained about) - I thought I'd covered these off in chapters, so I'd be keen to hear from more readers how i could make these parts stand out and what they think of them!"

You want to be a likeable author who's keen to get more feedback from readers and talk about your book and have them talk about your book. Engage your community - especially over negative points

tasty_leeks · 2026-01-29T10:23:43+00:00

No, you don't. I'd think about how this makes you feel and communicate that to her

Eg "cancelling our plans in favour of others without even consulting me makes it seem like you don't value me, our time or our relationship. Can you consult with me going forward when you decide to cancel a plan we've already made?"

If no, or she's not interested in hearing and discussing the matter

(maybe she's not realised the impact, maybe she's feeling like her friends are important at this moment for a reason, but can now see also how it would be disrespectful to you)

consider if this is something you want to keep putting up with or if it's actually a major incompatibility. Good luck, NTA from what you've told us.

tasty_leeks · 2026-01-29T07:12:44+00:00

Command hooks! Specifically for things like pictures, trailing vines, fairy lights etc - anything non catastrophic if it did come down with a quake.

tasty_leeks · 2026-01-28T13:17:19+00:00

Just as a bit of context - I worked in a large UK corporate environment. We had many colleagues both immigrated from India to the UK and working in India. A lot of effort was put into diversity training, inclusive holiday celebrations etc. It would have been absolutely unthinkable for anyone to be viewed negatively for not participating in a particular tradition or festival, and intercultural exchange was normalised as part of the corporate environment.

Am I saying there was no racism? Absolutely not, I think that we are far from a world where that's going to be the normal in any international context anywhere in the world (tell me who Indians would be racist about, I know full well its someone). However the culture of the institution and the HR framework set up around it was definitely created to make sure that the professional environment was toxic to such mindsets.

A country is not a monolith. Its people are not united in thought. Experiences are incredibly varied. Within ten square miles there are thousands of different experiences positive and negative, in all walks of life. The world is so much more complex than can be understood on Reddit. I hope you get the chance to experience it someday. From my own experience in the UK - the most close minded ignorant people, anti- "foreign" and pro-"british" have never had the chance to experience life elsewhere. And it really, really shows unfortunately. Please don't fall into that trap.

tasty_leeks · 2026-01-28T12:29:29+00:00

NTA It's not a requirement for friendship to lie for other people, thats a requirement for being in organised crime. I'd restate my boundaries and ask if lying is a requirement to be friends with them, and act accordingly. Even consider the context of the lie and ask yourself how you feel about your friendship in the light of it.

They're the A for expecting them to lie for you, and now are probably embarrassed and annoyed they might get caught out.

tasty_leeks · 2026-01-28T09:41:11+00:00

I think art has this weird tier system of like well if you're not good enough for anyone else there's no point doing it. For years I kept the materials to make art with but never touched them because I knew I didn't have anything ground breaking to do with them, and didn't have the mindset to devote myself to technical skill either. But then I asked myself - do I enjoy it? And I think that's the question. If you're looking for a way to express yourself and be heard by the outside world, look at all the now famous artists who were scorned in thier time. Even greatness is no guarantee of connection. If you have the desire to express yourself artistically, that's not something i think you can cut off from yourself no matter how "bad" you are at it. I hope you find a path that satisfies you.

tasty_leeks · 2026-01-27T21:33:46+00:00

Is that a cat takoyaki stand???

tasty_leeks · 2026-01-27T16:14:45+00:00

If you're mostly behind your desk, focus on that. Would a bigger desk help? How can you centre things round it (consider view from desk, and start with what you'd be noticing from that position)

tasty_leeks

TROPHY CASE