An Exhausted Guide has been floating around in the back of my head for years. I was once forced, under protest, to read "Fifty Shades of Grey". This was well after it had exploded in popularity, launching into the zeitgeist of mainstream media and let me tell you, I was not looking forward to it. But so many conversations were happening in my friends group surrounding this semi-erotic "Twilight" fanfiction that I just wasn't able to participate in many of our day to day catchups.
Thankfully, I found a saviour in "A Guy's Secret Guide to Fifty Shades of Grey" By Tom M. Paolangeli. It was, shall we say, rough. Yet ultimately, it contained all the knowledge I needed, and it was short. Thanks to Tom Paolangeli, I now understood the conversation and could pass myself off as having read the book without slogging through hundreds of pages.
Since then, I have taken for granted that should I ever need to push through another work that I find less than engaging, there would always be some kind of guide I could reference in just the same way.
So imagine my surprise when the borderline viral "Yellowface" by R.F. Kuang was thrust upon me, with nary a guide in sight.
As such, "An Exhausted Guide" was finally brought to the forefront. What was supposed to be a quick and dirty summary in the vein of "A Guy's Secret Guide", where occasionally entire chapter summaries were single-sentence affairs, ballooned into something much more polished and detailed. My perfectionism and reverence for the art form of writing saw to that.
If you haven't read it already, "An Exhausted Guide to: Yellowface" can be found on my store page, but here is a direct link for your convenience.
Ultimately, "An Exhausted Guide" is exactly what I, myself, was looking for. The act of creating it made me realise the desperate need for such a series all the more. No one has any time to themselves anymore. Mostly because we're no longer young teens, but let's ignore that for now. Between the cost of living, housing pressures and hustle culture, if you're not constantly grinding you're made to feel guilty. I didn't want to read Yellowface, I didn't have time to read Yellowface, and yet I had to for reasons beyond my control.
Knowing then what I do now, I would have dropped a hundred times the 99c asking price to get out of reading "Yellowface", if only "An Exhausted Guide" had existed. But I put in the hard yards, slogged through this thick social commentary, and documented my findings to save anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves in the same position.
I consider this a work of public good, and was very nearly going to release "An Exhausted Guide" for free. But if I want to make this a series, and I fully intend to, I needed to ensure I would have the means to continue. To that end, I set the price to 99c and intend to keep it there.
I'll be looking out for other works that require "An Exhausted Guide". If my toil can save a few hours for each of my readers, then I believe the cumulated savings will go on to add some real good to the world.
I am exhausted. You are exhausted. Everyone is exhausted. So I have fought tooth and nail to claw back some of your time and return it to you, dear reader. This is the first of such contributions, here's to many more.