Wicked Pretty Update

[cleolinda]

Quick recap: Jessica Verday dropped out of the "Melissa Marr-ish" Wicked Pretty Things YA anthology after being asked to change a "G-rated" male/male romance to male/female. The editor, Trisha Telep, made a bizarrely cheerful non-apology; Running Press claimed to both support LGBTQ writing and stand behind the editor 100%. Out of thirteen stories

Comments

[ceilidh_ann]

The plot thickens and I think it's only going to continue tomorrow.

I think the right path is to definitely hold Telep responsible for her actions, which completely bypassed actually consulting the publishers on the situation. Why do that? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The publishers are being rather coy over it all which is to be expected, but it wouldn't make sense on a business level to keep Telep employed on some level of the public and writer's community want nothing to do with her.

[cleolinda]

I feel like there's something else going on here that hasn't quite come to light yet. It's just really telling to me, though, that Telep assumed so blithely that a gay relationship/romance wasn't "light" enough content for the anthology, but the F word was totes okay. Like, three G-rated kisses (as Jessica termed them) were "dirtier" or more explicit than horror and cursing, to the point where she didn't even think to check, because it was such an obvious conclusion. Those are the views the writers are dealing with here, is what I'm saying.

[shadowmaat]

Maybe if they were kissing each other's naughty bits...

Wouldn't exactly be G-rated, though. ;)

[ceilidh_ann]

Yep, that made my blood boil. I'm still baffled at the 'alternative sexualities' thing as well. She never would have asked an author to change a character's ethnicity because her anthologies were light on 'alternative race.' It's not an 'old fashioned' idea of romance; it's a close minded one. She clearly didn't realise how seriously the YA community takes these issues but I think she does now. Still waiting on a real apology that doesn't talk about gay Scottish wrestling (still rolling my eyes at that one too.)

I wonder if stuff like this happens regularly, not just in YA but literature in general. I guess it's something not a lot of editors and publishers would want to blab about but I don't think this is an isolated incident. That's depressing.

[annaguirre]

"Unfortunately, C&C had already gone to press (like, physical final copies) when all this bullshit blew open, or I would've yanked it so fast the earth would've reversed rotation."

Ditto, this. I've deleted all reference to C&C from my website, and I won't be promoting it. If I could've pulled my story from that one too, I would have.

[cleolinda]

I hate that this is happening to y'all. And really sorry that that this one editor seems to be involved with 63% of all the anthologies published on earth. This is going to affect so many people. Thank you for standing up.

[cleolinda]

Yeah, I think what I had gathered from Jessica's post(s) was that the editor is considered the anthology "author" and is the one who gets the royalties? So boycotting the anthologies specifically does not hurt the authors, whereas boycotting all Running Press books (including other writers' novels) would.

[r_a_black]

The one with Trisha Telep as editor is this one.

[cleolinda]

Well, it's a fairly logical title for a steampunk collection, and there can be more than one book by the same name.

[infinityshark]

This whole thing is a Hallmark movie waiting to happen...

[ladyhadhafang]

Definitely go them. :) (The people who dropped out of this nonsense, that is, not the...perpetrators of the nonsense)