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Reminder Post: Creator Accountability Network

Hi everyone! I'm excited to announce that I've joined the Creator Accountability Network. I've posted about it several times recently as part of the onboarding process, and a quick version of the details about CAN will be at the end of all my posts from now on (including this one).  CAN is a nonprofit dedicated to reducing harassment and abuse through ethical education and a system of restorative accountability. I joined because I care about the safety and well being of my community members. If you feel my behavior or content has harmed someone, please report it to CAN, either via the reporting form on their website, CreatorAccountabilityNetwork.org, or via their hotline at (617-249-4255). They’ll help me make it right, and avoid repeating that mistake in the future. CAN also needs volunteers from our communities to help with their work, so if you have skills you think would be helpful, or time and a desire to help, please visit their website to find out how you ...

Winter Masquerade by Kevin Klehr

*I received a free review copy in exchange for an honest review of this book. 

Winter Masquerade is a bizarre and wonderful fever dream of a story, a magical mystery tale running on dream logic, punctuated by nightmares; speaking slantwise of slowly coming out from gaslighting, falling out of love, perhaps realizing it was never love at all. 

It conveys how it feels to slowly realize that everything is wrong, that it's okay to not be okay, and how hard it can be to try and make a change. This runs on witty banter and dream logic; that's a style which I specifically enjoy, and this is a particularly concentrated version of that type. The story has a recognizable kind of structure, a narrative style which mimics how dreams feel when you try to remember them; the pieces connected so beautifully while you were asleep, but upon waking they feel disparate and discordant. This mimics how it can feel to realize that things are a little bit wrong, a little bit broken. That maybe what you thought was “good enough” is actually neither “enough” nor “good”. That air of wrongness permeates this fantasy, hinting towards the reality which undergirds it. It gradually becomes more overt as the MC strains to figure out how to feel and what to do about it when this dream finally ends. 

CW for graphic violence, domestic abuse, and drug use.

A man in a suit and a party mask, his shirt partly open


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