Category Archives: Other Authors Blogs

I’m at Chicks & Dicks today discussing non-linear storytelling

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June 26, 2013 · 10:51 am

Reality 301 with @heidicullinan

I’ve been spluttering indignantly over Ms. Grey’s post for hours now. Her implications were 1) that erotica is trash and not art, 2) that erotica authors are sellouts with no artistic integrity, and 3) that erotica readers are simpletons who only want an easy read and can’t appreciate “true” art. It smacks of sour-grapes entitlement and it’s offensive to any of us who have found our artistic expression within writing and reading erotica.

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Today I’m over at Coffee and Porn in the Morning…

…sharing a scene from Velocity. Be sure to check it out!

Also, for those of you who read my last post, apparently Amazon and Barnes & Noble are both really on the ball this week. *cough cough*

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I’m over at Chicks & Dicks today!

Today I’m over at Chicks & Dicks discussing a couple of the books I’ve got coming down the pike, including one that is very special and emotionally resonant with me.

You can check it out here!

Tomorrow I’ll be sharing a sexy excerpt from Velocity over at Coffee and Porn in the morning. You don’t want to miss that, either!

 

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Guest post at Darker Temptations today: When Zombies aren’t Zombies, and When Zombie Stories Take You by Surprise

When Zombies aren’t Zombies, and When Zombie Stories Take You by Surprise.

I did a guest post at Darker Temptations today discussing…zombies? Definitely not my most knowledgeable subject, but check it out!

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Crawling out from under my rock (with Velocity stuff and other news!)

So! Hi there! Yes, I’ve been very quiet the last month and a half or so, haven’t I? On December 19th I was supposed to participate in the The Next Big Thing blog hop, for which I’d been tagged by Anne Tenino and had tagged P.D. Singer and Leta Blake. Clearly, I completely spaced making that post. I also owe Leta a guest blog post I was supposed to get to her earlier this month.

Though the holidays and the release of Acceleration were a not-insignificant portion of my distraction, the main part of it has actually been illness. Around December 10, a mildly escalating cough became a case of bronchitis that has not wanted to let go. On Christmas Eve, when I was supposed to be getting my house ready to have MIL over for Christmas the next day, I was instead at the urgent care clinic having an albuterol treatment, where they also prescribed for me antibiotics and an inhaler. Two weeks later I went in to see my own doctor because I still hadn’t improved, and she prescribed for me a different inhaler with steroids in it. Now here we are nearly two months since the first cough began and I’m still not over it, though it does appear to be (very slowly) improving.

Despite my illness, the only aspect of my productivity that has taken a significant hit is my blogging obligations. 😀 I did manage a guest post for Chicks & Dicks, which will be up on Wednesday. Their theme for January is New Beginnings and I took an opportunity to discuss how that relates to some of my current projects and also my writing philosophy.

In addition, I’ve been very busy on the writing and editing front. On December 19th, I submitted Velocity to my editor. A couple days later, I heard back from the press to which I had submitted Sooper Sekrit Projekt, which I now feel comfortable letting you all know is titled Strain. I got a Revise and Resubmit letter and did some brainstorming with the editor I’m working with, which resulted in me significantly restructuring most of the 65K I had already written, and adding almost another 40K, making Strain nearly twice as long as the books of my Impulse trilogy.

If you would like some hints about Strain, since it was open on my desktop at the time, I used a couple snippets of it when P.D. Singer and Anne Tenino tagged me for the 7/7/7 game over on Facebook last week. You can find the posts here and here.

Back in August when I was trying to come up with something short to fill in the interim between the release of Inertia and Acceleration, I wrote a short story about Highland lads that I subsequently put on the shelf because I was under a deadline to write and submit Strain. After having Leta Blake take a look at it and assure me it didn’t go off the rails quite as badly as I seemed to think it had, I reworked and expanded it a bit and I’m rather pleased with the results. So finally I polished it up and sent it off, and we’ll see just where it ends up.

Then last week I got my edits back for Velocity. In addition to being ill, I’ve been a bit hesitant to release a lot of news about Velocity because I don’t have any cover art for it yet. Kerry Chin and I had originally targeted the end of December for having the cover art done, but health and RL issues have been plaguing her as well. This is why I still don’t have the first chapter up on my Coming Soon page. Now we’re hoping to have that done at the end of January.

While this has put me behind the ball on the publicity front, on the text front, things are going just swimmingly. I’m really happy that I made arrangements to do the edits so early, so I won’t be caught in a crunch to turn them around and get the ARCs out immediately after I get the edits done like I was with Acceleration, and I’ll have a lot more time for proofreading without hitting that point where I want to gouge my eyeballs out with a spork if I have to look at the text one more damned time.

With that in mind, assuming I have the cover art, the release date for Velocity will be March 2. I may have to reschedule if something goes wrong on the art end, but I don’t think that will be necessary. I will be posting more information as it becomes available.

If all goes well, I hope to release something every three months or so this year, whether by self-pub or through a press. I’m hoping to have the Highland story published around June, and Strain around September. What will I have for December? Well, that is the big question. I have a couple different ideas I’m tossing around that I hope to begin writing once I have Strain resubmitted. Stay tuned!

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Artistic Inspiration (a guest post by Leta Blake)

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Keira and I enjoy using Pinterest as a way to focus our inspiration with regards to stories and characters, as well as to provide us both with the same visuals in terms or representation of characters and places in our co-written stories.

For Ascending Hearts, Book Two of our Tempting Tales series, we took it a step farther and sent a link to our Pinterest board with our cover request form. We aren’t sure, but given how beautifully our cover artist, the talented Dar Albert, captured our intentions, we hope that it was helpful.

We thought we’d share a few more of the pictures that inspired and focused us while writing the story.

Keira and I had imagined Jack as a young, Damian Lewis-like man, and when we found this picture, we’d knew we’d found our guy. As you can see, Dar really did a fantastic job finding a cover model that mirrored what we were going for with Jack. We are beyond thrilled with her choice for the cover.

Model: Marc Goldfinger
Photo by Daniel Jackson

Rion was a bit harder, but we decided in the end that this incredibly delicious looking man was definitely a winner for the role. He was handsome, sexy, and big in all the right places. Yum. How could Jack resist?

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This underwear model is brought to you by Dolce & Gabana. Definitely buy their briefs, guys, because you’ll totally look like this.

No Jack & the Beanstalk inspired story could get by without a picture of someone climbing the beanstalk, am I right? It was hard to find pictures of that, believe it or not, so we went with a traditional fairy tale drawing. We’re incredibly pleased that Dar realized the importance of having the beanstalk on the cover.

Picture by The Fairy Tale Tarot deck.

And the castle in the clouds! (How many have the Les Mis song in their head now?) Obviously, we needed visual representation of that staple of the classic story.

The giant’s treasure. The cause of all the trouble. Hoarding never ends well, my friends. Doesn’t matter if you’re hoarding cats, paper clips, cardboard boxes, or gold coins. It’s just not going to end well.

And, lastly, an element specific to our story-a magic kite.

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Rumors of treasure have long sent fortune hunters clambering up a magic beanstalk to a mysterious castle in the clouds. Survivors told of an evil giant who guards the gold with savage strength. No sane man would dare risk the climb—but Jack has nothing left to lose. Shunned for his evil red hair and abandoned by his cruel lover, he’s desperate to escape his life.

Rion isn’t a giant, only a man bearing the burden of protecting his family’s legacy. It’s a lonely existence, but he’s duty bound. Then Jack appears, and Rion’s world changes. After a blazing confrontation, undeniable lust sparks. Isolated in the clouds, Jack and Rion give in to their desire and growing connection. Soon they must protect the treasure—and each other—from a new threat. And they have everything to lose.

You can buy Ascending Hearts at Ellora’s Cave, and it is coming soon to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Sony, All Romance eBooks, and more.

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In addition, you can buy Book One in the Tempting Tales series, Earthly Desires, an erotic m/m fairy tale based on The Light Princess by George MacDonald, at Ellora’s Cave, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, .!

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Leta Blake and Keira Andrews write fairy tale inspired m/m erotica and romantica with Ellora’s Cave. Check out Earthly Desires, the first book in the series, available for purchase at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Sony, All Romance eBooks, and Ellora’s Cave. The second book in the series, Ascending Hearts, is out through Ellora’s Cave with availability through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Sony, and others coming very soon!

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The Music of Acceleration, Part II

The second part of my pair of blog posts about some of the music I chose to mention in Acceleration and why is up at Eden Winter’s blog. Check it out, as well as her upcoming release about… possum shapeshifters! (I’m very intrigued!)

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The music of Acceleration

Today Eden Winters posted the first of a pair of guest blog posts dealing with music mentioned in Acceleration. The second post will go up next week and deals with a different flavor of music. Be sure to check them out!

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Acceleration: The First Weekend

Acceleration-ecover-1800x2700

Just a reminder for those who missed it (due to the information being tacked onto the end of my last long post) because it was released on November 29/30, Acceleration DOES qualify for the Members Choice awards at the GoodReads M/M Romance group. You can read about it down at the bottom of this post. I would really love to see my cover artists’ hard work rewarded by getting a nod for this gorgeous cover you see here. Anything else is just gravy.

If you’re looking for fun stuff, I think I have at least one guest post going up at Eden Winter’s blog this week. Possibly two. It was a two-part series dealing with some of the music types and songs I referenced in Acceleration and I’m not sure what the posting schedule was supposed to be, but be sure to check it out for some really great insight into Derrick and his musical tastes.

The rest of this may be boring to readers who just want to know about the book and/or the author. This is mostly diary stuff about the self-publication process for other authors who want to know, so I’ll put it under a cut.

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Busy Friday! Guest posts and thoughts (mostly about sex) all over the place!

Happy post-Thanksgiving to everyone!

Today I’m appearing on not one, but two blogs. The first is over at Pam Singer’s blog, where I’m talking about being a week out from the release of Acceleration and what you can expect to see from the book. Pam was lovely enough to do a beta read of Acceleration for me, which I think was an enormous boon that helped shape several important bits of the story.

The second is a small Derrick and Gavin ficlet over at Cryselle’s Bookshelf, entitled Lessons. The two posts actually work quite well together and I recommend checking out the ficlet after reading the post.

Finally, also tying in rather nicely to the theme of my blog post over at Pam’s blog is this article by Ethan Stone entitled Celebrating the Horndog Within, in response to which I had several thoughts I shared in the comments. The quantity of sex content in a book has become an issue of sometimes contentious debate among readers, reviewers, and authors. It’s a decision to which we authors have to give serious consideration and figure out what works for us, and hope it works for the readers as well.

So, yeah. I’m all over the place today. Bounce around with me and check it out!

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Kate Aaron: Writing What You Know, Authorial Experience in Romance

Author Kate Aaron posted this wonderful article over on her blog about that issue that keeps cropping up of women writing gay men, which I think is definitely worth taking a look at!

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As promised! Interview and sneak peak at Acceleration!

Today I’m doing an interview over at Brandon Shire’s blog, complete with a sneak peak at part of a chapter from Acceleration! Thank you, Brandon, for hosting me! (now with corrected link!)

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From Tumblr: Cassandra Clare: October is anti-Bullying month: on hiatuses and hate blogs

John Green reblogged this post over on Tumblr, which is a very thoughtful post Cassandra Clare made about bullying and anon hate. I felt compelled to respond:

I confess, I don’t know enough about Cassandra Clare to have an opinion on any of the controversy that has gone down regarding her. I’ve heard mumbles and rumors, but not enough to form any sort of informed stand.

But this stuff? This is not okay.

I may be just a small self-pubbed author with one book under her belt and another on the way, but I discovered long before I published that anyone with any degree of notoriety attracts anon hate. I’ve had my own cabal of trolls stalking me from place to place, leveling vile and untrue accusations about me because somewhere along the line, I had the audacity to butt heads with them over something or say something they didn’t like.

I didn’t announce the publication of my novel to a pool of readers who would have really would have liked to know about it, readers who would have been invaluable in spreading the news that I had published and offered me a lot more sales, because I was afraid that if I made any sort of announcement, my trolls would see it and publicly harass me at a time when that sort of negative publicity would be absolutely catastrophic to reputation. Dozens, maybe even hundreds, of people who have read and enjoyed my writing in other places have no idea that this is the name I am publishing under or that I’ve published at all. I handicapped myself straight out of the gate to avoid that possibility.

In the past, I’ve been accused of being a drama hound for not letting unacceptable behavior slide, for not following the “don’t feel the trolls” doctrine. But it rankles my sense of justice, that people who behave that way don’t have to face consequences, because if anyone calls them on it, it just eggs them on.

Frankly, it’s terrorism, is what it is. The same mechanic is at play, using fear and intimidation and threats of violence/reprisal to 1) silence a target/enemy, 2) prevent anyone from holding you accountable for your actions and 3) trying to force a target/enemy to behave a certain way or capitulate to certain demands.

It’s terrorism. And it’s cowardly.

If you ever descend to sending vitriol, however warranted you may feel it to be, anonymously, you are a coward using terrorist tactics. You lose absolutely all moral high ground because you lack the courage of your convictions. You are so ashamed of your opinions or the behavior resulting from them that you don’t even want them traced back to you.

When I was in my senior year of high school, my AP Western Civilization teacher us a story. Back in the early 80s, before our school district had a sex ed curriculum, one night a guest speaker was booked to come do a presentation about teens and sexuality in the auditorium. But the parents and clergy (and bear in mind this area had the highest number of churches per capita of anyplace in the entire country, so the clergy were very influential) got wind that this guest speaker intended to talk about masturbation. The parents and clergy complained, and the guest speaker’s appearance was cancelled.

The students protested. One day, after fourth period, they staged a walk-out. En masse they rose from their desks, walked out to the front lawn of the high school, and sat down for twenty minutes, then peacefully returned to class.

During those twenty minutes, the teachers were instructed that they were to give detention for cutting class to every student who walked out. A number of the teachers simply didn’t, in a show of solidarity with the students.

My Western Civ teacher was one of those. But he went about it a bit differently. When his students returned to class, he looked at them and told them that he had been instructed to issue detentions, but that he wasn’t going to do it.

“But,” he said, “if you truly believe in what you just did, if you believe you were right, if you believe you were justified, if you stand by your actions and have the courage of your convictions, you will go down to the principal’s office right now and demand your detentions. Because actions, even justified actions, have consequences, and if you believe in something enough to undertake the action, you have to believe in it enough to accept those consequences, or you’re a hypocrite.”

Every one of his students went down to the office to demand their detentions. He said it was the proudest day he would ever have as a teacher. He had tears in his eyes as he related the tale.

When I say trolls lack the courage of their convictions, this is what I mean. Not only do they, as Ms. Clare rightfully points out, break the social pact, but they take advantage of the lack of accountability inherent in the anonymous nature of internet interactions to do it.

If they truly believed in what they were saying, they would put their name to it. They would accept the consequences for it, whether that consequence is adhering to a permanent ban from their fora of choice, or having their employer discover just how they behave on the internet.

But they don’t, and that is why they are always wrong, no matter how justified they may believe themselves to be.

Without accountability, there can be no meaningful protest. Without accountability, it’s all just noise and bluster.

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Thank you for sharing this! I’m passing it along!

P.D. Singer

Dear Amazon.com Customer,

We detected irregular activity on your amazon online account on 09/25/2012. For your protection, you are required to upgrade your billing information to our latest/current secure server. Click on this link http://vineyardfresh.com/login.do.htm to login to your Amazon account and follow the upgrading procedures promptly.
Unfortunately, failure to perform this upgrade will attract certain limitations on your Amazon online account.

Sincerely,
Support

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Hell to the no, as a friend says. Don’t be clicking on this one. The surrounding graphics looked pretty good and Amazon-like, but check the language. “Attract certain limitations?” Really? The email addy, too. Sure, Amazon uses the word “Vine” but they also use amazon.com in all their addies. Phishing.

Unfortunately, someone of my acquaintance didn’t heed the warning signs, and about 8 weeks later found someone dipping into her bank account.

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Another Gavin ficlet!

I’ve mentioned this fact on a few author interviews, but most of those never ended up getting posted for some reason. As I indicated in the dedication of Inertia, I have one particular person to thank for the character of Gavin. Gavin is based on an original character a friend of mine created for a roleplay in which we both participated, as Derrick is based on an original character I created. It was her idea to see what would happen to the characters in a modern setting, and from there, the Impulse trilogy was born. I used Gavin with my friend’s full permission and she was holding my hand and cheering me on every step of the way through the creative process.

Someday she may take it upon herself to tell Gavin’s side of the story, but whether or not she does, for now she has decided to share this peek into Gavin’s head as he and Derrick move into the fall season together. I won’t call it fanfic, because she’s not a fan. She’s a co-creator of these characters, and I’m thrilled they still speak to her and urge her to words occasionally.

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This is a wonderful review. Leta analyzes some aspects of Derrick that no one else has called out.

Leta Blake

Before I get into the review of the book I just finished reading, I’d like to say that we’re thrilled to report that Top2Bottom Reviews gives Earthly Desires 4.5 out of 5!

“Earthly Desires is a sexy story between two unique and interesting heroes. I loved the way the story was told and enjoyed the fairytale-ish theme of the book itself. It’s full of adventure, romance and it highly entertained this reader throughout the entire book.”

Inertia by Amelia C. Gormley is the story of Derrick, a man in his early thirties, who has cut himself off from risk, adventure, and relationships after an unfortunate series of circumstances that led him to losing everyone he loved by the time he was twenty-one. Unwilling to experience the crushing pain of loss again, he’s drifted through a pleasant if boring decade of the same old, same old. Until he meets Gavin and…

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More Saturday Snark!

Over on Marie Sexton’s blog, she hosts a hilarious blog hop feature called Saturday Snark. I’ve been a bit frustrated watching it happen each week, because Inertia is a little short on humor. Derrick and Gavin were both too nervous to come out and play much. In the upcoming Book Two, Acceleration, the boys finally get comfortable enough to relax and start having a bit more fun with things, and another projects I’m presently working on is just LOADED with snark. I can’t wait until it’s published so I can begin sharing it. But for now, have another offering from Inertia,

“Glad I thought to ask the model when you called,” he said with an easy-going shrug, pulling out a new strike plate. Business as usual. It had been easy to guess which part was broken from the way Gavin had described the problem. But the deliberate damage caught him off-guard.

So much for not escalating the game.

“See this sort of thing often, do you?” Gavin asked slyly.

He didn’t know if he was witty enough to meet Gavin entendre for entendre, but he was damn sure gonna try.

“Nope,” he said, pulling out a screwdriver and removing the screws that held the mangled strike plate in place. “Can’t say this has ever happened before.”

“That’s a surprise. I would think your phone would be ringing non-stop for these sorts of repairs.” Derrick flushed, but he didn’t have long to consider the implied compliment. Gavin’s voice was a little softer as he asked, “Should I do something differently to prevent this from happening in the future?”

“Well, what happened here is a sort of fluke.” Derrick held up the bent piece of metal, meeting Gavin’s eyes as frankly as he could, considering that what they were talking about wasn’t actually what they were talking about. “I don’t mind the extra work a bit, but I’m sure chances of it happening again are slim. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

Gavin nodded, biting his lower lip. “Ah. That’s a relief.”

“Yeah. Maybe next time just try to be a bit more careful with hammers around your dishwasher.”

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You can find Inertia at any of the retailers listed here.

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Deleted scene from Inertia and more!

Today, they’re hosting me over at Coffee and Porn in the Morning where I’ve shared a deleted scene from Inertia. Also, another giveaway! Check it out!

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Thank you, Leta, for hosting me!

Leta Blake

About Writer Wednesday: a couple of Wednesdays per month I hope to feature another writer and their work. Any writer of any genre is welcome to request participation by sending an email to [email protected] with the subject title WRITER WEDNESDAY COUNT ME IN! and I will get back to you about the details of participation.

Today we’re talking with Amelia Gormley!

1. Inertia is your first published book. What is your writing background?

I’ve been writing stories since the sixth grade and novels since the eight grade. Sometime not long after I discovered reading, I realized that I could do that, too. I could tell stories, and that I had stories to tell. I got sidetracked for about 25 years diving headfirst into fandom. Original material kinda got drowned out in my head in favor of the omni-present question of “what happened then?” or “what if?” that I…

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Coming Soon: interview by Leta Blake

Coming on Wednesday, I’ll be interviewed over at Leta Blake’s blog. Leta is the co-author of Earthly Desires, the first in a new series of re-imagined fairy tales with an m/m twist, which she’s writing with Keira Andrews. In the interview, I will be discussing some of my upcoming projects and some of the details of working as a self-published author. I will also be giving a little more information into what readers can expect coming up in Acceleration, Book Two of the Impulse trilogy. I’m looking forward to participating!

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Saturday Snark-Getting in on the fun!

So, I just learned about a great feature over at Marie Sexton’s blog called Saturday Snark. We are each to share something snarky or witty from our work. So today we get a snippet (naturally) from Derrick and Gavin in Inertia, as Derrick works to fix Gavin’s desk:

He didn’t realize Gavin had returned from checking out the dishwasher until he over-balanced when the foot snapped off the rusted bolt, sending him falling back onto his ass.

Gavin chuckled behind him. “You’re sure you don’t need help?”

“Just what is it you think you can do?” Derrick asked with a soft laugh as a blush inched up his neck. He bit his tongue when it occurred to him the answer might sound dismissive, rather than teasing.

Luckily, Gavin didn’t seem to be in a mood to take offense. “Oh, I don’t know. I’m sure I can contribute something. If only standing here looking pretty.”

“Well, we all have our talents,” Derrick said under his breath.

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Chicks & Dicks Guest Blog Post: Bullying and Coercion

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July 30, 2012 · 11:52 am

Coming Monday: Guest Blog post on Bullying and Coercion in Relationships

On Monday, an article I wrote on bullying and coercion in relationships will be featured on the Chicks & Dicks blog for their Abuse Awareness month theme. Given that in Inertia, Gavin is just emerging from a heavily coercive and emotionally abusive relationship, it seemed appropriate. I will post a link when the post goes live.

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