The time has come for me to retire the Ava Lock robot profile pic. After writing The Womanoid Diaries, I realized that robots and AI are a metaphor for slave labor. Cookie Rifkin taught me that lesson well. And of all the issues I’ve been railing against for the past several years, corporate exploitation of creative labor is at the tippy top. So, so long, anon bot pic. You served me well.
So often, our writing work goes unpaid for one reason or another. People go to great lengths to make us feel like we don’t deserve a living wage. They tell us creative work is fun and, therefore, not actual work. They make us intern. They trick us into volunteering to collaborate. They get us to believe submitting to unpaid publications will help our writing career. They have us create free content for likes on their websites. They think we can pay our bills with their compliments and warm fuzzies. Scams and con artists abound.
I am no longer working for anyone for free. Period.
I’ll be having a for-real, grown-up author photoshoot this week. Soon after that, I’ll be posting my official profile pic here and on all my legit accounts online. I’m even going to do the thing where authors include their headshots on the back of their books. Because I’m a human being. I’m a professional writer. And goddammit, it’s about time people treat me as such.