As I wend my way through edits, my first book has acquired a new title, Pledging Season, and will be getting a professional cover in January. I am super excited!
Category: Blog
Being Nice and Being Real
“Ms. M you hella fake!” Madai, one of my students, keeps informing me. I frown in confusion and ask what she means. “You know,” she tells me, “you gotta be real with us.”
I don’t know. I have no idea what she’s talking about. I forget about it, actually, until I hear the same word from one of my colleagues. “We’re being fake,” he says. “We need to be real.” Be real? I still have no idea what that means.
It’s not until I’m driving Sammy, another student, up to Berkeley to meet Geoffrey Canada that someone explains it to me in a way I understand. We’re talking about the different ways we talk to people as we pass a beat up old car. It’s rusting out and has broken headlights, and were it not for duct tape, it would dissolve into pieces on the road.
Continue reading “Being Nice and Being Real”“Tend and Befriend” Stress Response
Here’s an interesting article. Under stress, human beings can have a flight or fight response, but they can also become more compassionate and more likely to make sacrifices for the well-being of others.
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_to_transform_stress_courage_connection
The Mental Load
Sometimes someone else’s essay is so awesome that there’s nothing left for me to do but link to it. I love those essays. Especially when I’m on a deadline. Below is the iconic cartoon about the mental load of household work. It’s always worth a revisit.
Second Draft of Through The Mirror is Done!
Wow, that didn’t take at all longer than I thought it would. Nope. I have not in any way, shape, or form encountered the phenomenon that literally everyone who is not a first-time author warns about. About that length of time it takes to make revisions… I would like to blame caring for a three-year-old during indefinite quarantine, but that honestly only added a month or two.
At any rate, completely ripping apart the first draft, adding a second point of view, substantially revising the themes, and actually… you know… doing some series planing is now done. Next up is shipping it off to editors. At which point I, with my new found humility, estimate that revisions will take a very long time. I’m still hoping to have pre-order links up this year. Now that I have also looked into the lead time needed to market a book, I have a tough time seeing this coming out before 2021. However, I promise it will make it into print eventually!
Who Pays for Justice?
How many of us can imagine ourselves responding the way the owner of a family restaurant in Minneapolis did when his restaurant burned to the ground during the riots triggered by George Floyd’s murder at the hands of the police? “Let my building burn,” he said. “Justice needs to be served. Put those officers in jail.” His daughter, telling the story in the Washington Post, adds, “If this is what it takes to get justice, then it will have been worth it.”
Continue reading “Who Pays for Justice?”The Biology (or Lack Thereof) of Gender
As a sci-fi author, I wrote a world of characters who disagree with each other about what gender is, but all think that our gender binary is illogical. This drives some real world cisgender people wild. “But isn’t dividing into men vs. women natural?” they argue. “Humans only have two reproductive roles. Defining gender based on who has a penis versus who has a vagina just makes sense!” (Pointing out the existence of intersex people makes a remarkably small dent in this logic. Instead, intersex people get shuffled off as a minor exception to an otherwise logical system grounded in the fundamental facts of reproductive biology.) Many trans activists and theorists have countered this argument far more eloquently than I. However, I would like to take a moment to respond to this argument purely from within the experience of a cisgender straight person. Even the cis people most wedded to conventional divisions of gender fail to take those professed beliefs seriously. From the standpoint of its own professed logic, the gender binary is incoherent.
Continue reading “The Biology (or Lack Thereof) of Gender”A Christmas Carol: For White Authors Who Don’t Want to be Scrooge
ACT 1
The curtain opens on a darkened office. One lamp casts light onto the face of the White Author, who is sitting at a desk hunched over a laptop looking at Twitter. Whispers start. At first, the words are too faint to make out, but gradually occasional whispers become audible, making it clear that the White Author is reading comments about their recently published book. The word “racist” is heard with greater and greater frequency. The White Author straightens and starts typing frantically.
WHITE AUTHOR: What! How dare you say my book is racist! I’m not racist! You’re racist!
The White Author raises their hand, about to strike the “Enter” key angrily. Behind them, Ghost 1, a semi-transparent white man wearing a top hat and coat, materializes.
GHOST 1: Wait!
WHITE AUTHOR: (turning and lowering hand) Who are you?
GHOST 1: The Ghost of Racism Past.
Continue reading “A Christmas Carol: For White Authors Who Don’t Want to be Scrooge”The Accidental Cover
Huh. I appear to have accidentally made myself a book cover.
Honest, I was trying to get over my extreme tendency to do everything myself. I really and truly intended to hire a professional for this. I still do. But I was playing around with some concept art for the cover and it kept being almost right, so I kept tweaking it, and before you know it… three days of no writing and bam, a book cover. The control freak in me says, “YES! ALL THE EDITING POWER IS MINE!!!!” The part of me that is attempting to learn that getting help from other people frequently makes for a better product is retrenching at editors. Negotiations continue.
Credit to Gianella Castro, Anne Nygard, and Vinicius Amano on Unsplash for the images used.
Fun with Author Photos!
Getting official author photos done is also known as… time to haul out my favorite dress I ever sewed! This is one of the things I miss about teaching. Chaperoning prom is one of the only opportunities for adults to wear super fancy dresses. I had a blast getting these done.
