Ari and I don’t usually talk about our personal lives much here, especially not about politics, but I want to talk about it now.

A week ago, I cast my vote proudly and blithely assumed I would wake up Wednesday morning to confirmation of America’s first female president. Instead, my old friends Anxiety and Depression came to visit as I watched state after state go red, and they’ve been camped out on my couch ever since.

It’s been a rough week for me, as it has been for many people. I’ve never cried over an election before. It’s affected my job performance and my ability to write.

But I’ve reached the point of wanting something concrete to do, so I’ve decided to make a donation each month to a different organization that helps those who are endangered by Trump’s presidency. It won’t be a large donation because a) I’m an adjunct, b) I’m carrying a significant load of debt, and c) Torquere Press hasn’t paid me the royalties I was counting on to help me get through the rest of the year. But I figure every little bit helps.

I started this month by donating to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Next month, I’m going to donate to Planned Parenthood, possibly in Mike Pence’s name. I’m doing research and compiling a list of other credible organizations to donate to down the road.

It’s not much, but it’s my first step toward doing more to make sure there’s a shake-up in 2018 and 2020.

Ari has been talking about our situation with Torquere a little on Twitter and Facebook, but we decided it was time to address the situation more directly on our website.

The bottom line is this: Torquere Press hasn’t paid us for quarter 2. No author has been paid for Q2 that I’m aware of. We have yet to receive royalty reports for Q3, and I’m not holding my breath for a Q3 check either. The owner of Torquere hasn’t provided any concrete plan that I’m aware of for paying authors what they’re owed for the books they wrote and sold in good faith to Torquere Press. From what I understand, she isn’t responding to emails either.

If she wants to dig herself out of the hole she’s in, she needs to offer complete transparency on what happened and where the money she should have put aside to pay the authors with went. She needs to tell the authors her plan for paying royalties owed. She needs to communicate with the authors regularly and provide evidence as to how she plans to get Torquere Press back on track.

As readers of our blog know, we joined other former Torquere authors in requesting the rights back to our books a few weeks ago. We did receive our rights back to everything but our most recent novel, Blood Bathory: Be Not Proud. The owner of Torquere claimed that if we wanted the rights back to that one, she’d have to garnish our royalties because it hadn’t been out long enough to earn back its publication costs. We decided to let it remain for the time being.

If you’re currently a writer at Torquere, I’d strongly recommend trying to get your rights back if you haven’t already. If you’re a new writer looking for a place to submit your work, I’d strongly recommend not submitting anything to Torquere. I don’t know if they’ll be able to bounce back or if they’ll go down the same path as Ellora’s Cave, but either way, Ari and I aren’t sticking around to find out.