Well, I had a very different post to make in mind for today.

It’s been a while since I wrote anything, both here and in general, but I’ve been reading more lately which has inspired me to put pen to paper (or fingertips to keyboard, more accurately). Of note, I’ve been reading things similar to what I want to write, for equal parts inspiration and motivation.

One of the authors I’ve been reading, who shall remain nameless (not to protect anyone, but because I was unaware of this until today and haven’t done my homework yet, so I don’t want to get anything wrong), wrote my favourite book that I read last year. The second part (of a trilogy) came out today, and I also read a novella in that universe over the weekend to get hyped for today. I had work in the city, a difficult matter, and my reward was to stop into Chapters on the way home (for more work after lunch) and I’d get to dig into it tonight.

Well, I picked it up, as planned. And posted pics to my usual social media (Facebook and Twitter, I am not really up with the other cool kids with the Tumblies, Tikkity-Toks, or the Insta-ma-call-it), mainly to share my excitement. On the Twitter entry I even tagged the author, wanting to show my support.

Then I saw a friend comment on my Facebook post expressing surprise that the book was published. Someone else chimed in, and I soon realized that there was something going on that I didn’t know about, and wasn’t going to like.

I found out what it was, thanks to those friends, and, yup. It wasn’t good. I do appreciate them telling me that, though – I am not as plugged in to the writing world, I’ll confess, but things like this realize I should make a better effort to do so.

Which leaves me with a book I’ve been waiting for since I finished the first one last year, and have been positively excited to get, and now I don’t want to read it at all. It’s going on the shelf (ok, let’s be honest, a lot of my books are on various floors and/or pieces of furniture, so somewhere) for… I don’t know how long. I don’t imagine Chapters is taking returns in the COVID-19 era, so yeah. I may look into sending some money to an appropriate charity now, that might help perhaps.

My first reaction was a selfish one, I’ll admit; I loved the first book so much, and promoted it/suggested it to anyone who’d listen. In fact, I got a friend to order it and the sequel just this past weekend, which I feel really bad about now. This is why we can’t have nice things, I thought.

The bigger problem, though, is that people just need to stop being garbage. And, when they are, people need to keep calling them out, and/or stop supporting them, no matter how much you enjoyed their works. Any disappointment I might feel on not being able to enjoy such things is far outweighed by the harm such people cause, and that’s not something anyone should want to support.

So, instead of digging into the book I thought I’d be starting tonight, I’m going to turn to another trilogy I’ve started but have only read the first book: the Shades of Magic series by V.E. Schwab. Time to dig into a Gathering of Shadows. I loved the first one, and I think I’ll feel a heck of a lot better reading this now than what I’d originally planned to read.