Personal Digest Saturday - May 9 – May 15

Life news this week:

• Saturday I did my blogging relatively early and texted my sister 'cause it was her birthday! Tried to play DDR but only got partway through my intended games because one of the buttons broke. Worked on singing practice. Did a bunch of research for drawing references for my story characters and got two of them done before I got too tired to keep going.
  
  
• Sunday I did some laundry and other chores, and I learned a song for the band, sent a Polo to Meg, and spent the rest of the day just sketching, inking, and coloring drawings of characters for the new story.
  
  
• Monday I got up early because I fell asleep early. Went to a meeting, edited a letter, and dealt with subconsultants. Then it was back to drawing. Also met up with Kari and took a walk, did some aerobics, and did more drawing.
  
  
• Tuesday I worked on a technical paper at work and that took up a bunch of the day. Other than that I just did more work on silly drawings.
  
  
• Wednesday I did organizational tasks at work. Also worked on editing my short-story-turned-novella, sang the song I learned Sunday on the karaoke website, got some chores done, sent in a query, and did some aerobics. Jeaux came and we visited Lowe's, ate at Mandola's, and grocery shopped. Then he fixed my DDR pad and we showed each other the usual silly internet things. After he left I drew a little more.
  
  
• Thursday I had more miscellaneous stuff at work. I doodled a silly comic with my characters, wrote my webcomic storyboard, and did some walking and reading. (I've been skipping reading a lot this week.) Then I went to Game Night and played with my friends. After work I tried to work on a synopsis for a publisher but I got too tired and went to sleep.
  
  
• Friday I finished the synopsis before going in to work. I had a meeting and some reports to do. I worked on my story some more and then drew my comic. Played DDR because my pad is fixed. Sent a Polo to my crit partner Ben and did some more work on my story.

New Reviews:

• Haley gave The Invisible Orientation a two-star review on Goodreads.

Health Plan Update:

• Nutrition stuff: I got my three servings of fruits and veggies every day this week, and met my protein goals six out of seven days--the restaurant day involved pizza, so as per usual, the higher-fat foods won out. I am still taking my vitamins.
  
  
• Activity stuff: I'm continuing to do DDR or aerobics every other day. I made my 10,000-step walking goal every day this week. Based on my phone's app, my low day was Sunday at 10,108 steps, and my high day was Wednesday at 12,811 steps.

Books Read: 

• Finished Reading: Nothing this week.
  
  
• Currently Reading: The Dawn of Yangchen by F.C. Yee. I'm on page 288.

New singing performances:

This week's karaoke song: "Heartbreaker" by Pat Benatar

Stuff drawn:

I drew a LOT this week but not all of them will be posted--just trying to go backwards drawing pictures of characters so I can then go back into the story and get their descriptions a little more consistently. (I'm bad at remembering to include visuals.) Here are the character cards for the new characters from In Your Favor with whom I've been spending a lot of my time lately. (Want to try to guess who's the protagonist?)

And here is a group doodle I did to try to figure out their heights and colors:

My weekly fantasy webcomic, Negative One:

   

#1096: ivy #363: something pretty special.

Videos Made: 

None.

New photos:

None.

Social media counts:

YouTube subscribers: 5,433 for swankivy (lost 1), 675 for JulieSondra (no change), 17 for v & V Vids (no change), 215 for Not-So-Giant Women (no change), 67 for Tides of Time Band (no change) 4 for Vinyl Impact Band (1 new). Twitter followers: 742 for swankivy (lost 1), 3,359 for JulieSondra (lost 8). Facebook: 285 friends for swankivy (no change), 621 likes for JulieSondra (1 new), 78 followers for Negative One (no change), 241 followers for So You Write (no change), 100 followers for Not-So-Giant-Women (no change). Tumblr followers: 2,409 (lost 1). Instagram followers: 307 (3 new). Threads followers: 89 (2 new). Bluesky Social. Bluesky followers: 458 (3 new).

Preliminary test reader list for sapphic YA SF?

I'm on the (hopefully) final edit of writing a YA book and wondered if any people still hanging around my blog would be interested in being part of the test reader circle. I thought it might be useful to include some new blood this time instead of just sticking with people who have read my work before.

The book: Currently titled In Bloom, a YA sapphic science fiction book by meeee.

The elevator pitch (longer description below):

The new girl in school is hot, but fifteen-year-old Kamber Valerian isn't supposed to be dating humans (or girls, of course). She's a member of the Kinfolk collective: an endangered species that almost died out 600 years ago when humans colonized their ancestral world. Her culture expects her to settle down with a local Kin boy and fulfill their race's promise to the Goddess, which is a tall order for someone who likes girls; while she treasures her spirituality, Kamber fears she's trapped in a fertility cult, with her path to maturity blocked if she refuses traditional marriage. Is the chance to date Joanne worth rejecting her sacred duties and possibly destroying her relationship with her family?

Notes:

• This is my first third-person novel.
• This is a science fiction story set in the distant future. The worldbuilding for it is very quiet, and I’m worrying that the reveals are a little too as-you-know-bob.
• Lots of dialogue.
• It’s more romantic than I thought it would be—the romance is front and center, and early.
• Its first draft was 200,000 words. It's now down to about 134,000. I'm hoping to hack it down into the high 120s before sending to the test audience.
• I’m not good at naming alien places. Who names a continent “Dry Lace”? It's a translation, screw you.
• The aliens are really humany in this book, but they can't reproduce with humans and do have significantly different biology. I didn't put it in the book but I do think they're distantly related to humans somehow.
• There's no "superpowers" exactly but the aliens do have a couple weird abilities. They can convey heat in special ways (and also therefore make fire) and can communicate with each other, animals, and trees using signals in their breath. It's weird and cool.
• While it's tempting to assume a "colonizers almost wiped us out" storyline would necessarily appropriate Indigenous narratives, the protagonist's framing of it is more closely tied to the Holocaust, which I draw from through my perspective as a Jewish woman.
• I am obsessed with Steven Universe, which has a lot of space lesbians in it. I am also writing about lesbians in space. And yet, it is nothing like Steven Universe.
• Yes there are asexual characters in it, sheesh.

The process:

• You comment or message me expressing interest
• I get your e-mail details
• I send you the first 2 chapters
• You provide thoughts and feedback on the excerpt and let me know if you want the rest of the book
• I include you in the acknowledgments (if you want) when it's published, bam

What I want:

• Positive comments on what jokes, interactions, characterizations, worldbuilding elements etc. you like
• "Sensitivity reader" type comments if you're worried something will be offensive or land poorly in a way I might not have thought of
• Unanswered questions about the world or characters that you think should be answered
• Developmental editing–type commentary if you think it needs it
• Commentary on appropriateness for test audience (re: sexy content, language, language complexity)
• Especially interested in perspectives from sapphic readers who grew up in a conservative or religious family
• Random uncensored thoughts
• Flagging confusing sentences, wording, or vocabulary (do not focus on this unless it really leaps out at you)

What I don't want:

• Proofreading-level comments (please, please don't waste your time with line edits or punctuation suggestions)
• Rewording suggestions based on how you would have written it
• Weird judgmental/bigoted shit about how I shouldn't write gay books (obviously)

Ivy's Birthday 2017

Does anyone else celebrate character birthdays?

The first "serious" novel I wrote, shortly before I started college, began on July 31, 1996. I decided to also make that Ivy's birthday in the canon of the story, just because that's a cute way to remember when she was actually "born" in my reality. I used to celebrate that day as a "celebrating being a writer" day and sometimes do something associated with that fictional world to remind myself how important it is, even though I'm no longer writing those books.

I haven't been writing anything new really for a long time now. Not on novels, anyway, and a few things are in limbo publishing-wise. I'm not apathetic about it. I'm not afraid of it. I'm not stuck. But I'm focused on other things--in the "real world" of my life, I turned in a declaration to my apartment complex today stating that I intend to vacate at the end of my lease, which means I have to get serious about finding a new place to live, and then in other aspects of my life I'm mostly just being a massive fangirl--working on my costume and accessories for this weekend's convention, learning songs to play on ukulele to go with it, drawing a bunch of art. It takes time and attention, and though you all know how productive I can be, I still only have one brain and the same 24 hours everyone else has.

I'm focusing a lot of creative energy on art and music that I hadn't before when I was very deep in my writing. I believe fiction projects will always have my heart first and foremost, because they always have, but if you look at my history as a kid, there was always art and music right beside it. And if you look at my output during the very consistent years I spent writing, there is almost no art and only a little more music coming out of my creativity machine. But even considering that, I still sort of feel like my hiatus from writing is disappointing somehow.

I don't have clear plans to jump back in at any particular time. Last night (and at other random times in the recent past) I had a moment where I just wanted to open one of my works in progress, read through what I had, and continue it, but I can't afford to do that right now with the convention coming up and my ukulele repertoire a lot closer to being in the toilet than I wanted. I know how immersive writing is and it needs to stay on the shelf while I'm doing this convention and then it needs to share the stage with my pressing concerns about moving. I may not be able to return until after I'm settled in my new home.

Things change, and you grow in the direction that you can. One thing that changed for me, while working with Ivy, was that I grew more competent in my writing skills and eventually came to the conclusion that my novels about her would not go anywhere. I would have to give them a massive overhauling that would essentially transplant her in to a different story, and I didn't want to scrape her out of the place she grew. So I decided it's okay for her to not be in a marketable story, and made her story into a webcomic.

My writing fused with pencil art and talk bubbles to provide a continued life for Ivy, a character I love, and a path by which I bring her directly to my readers, who aren't paying for the privilege of reading about her and don't necessarily have any typical expectations of where her webcomic is going. In short, in webcomics I can do what I want, and no one's going to feel ripped off if the story meanders and does ridiculous things and seems self-indulgent. That's what it is--it's a place to put her because I love her and I wanted to share her somehow.

Maybe today, since I have to get my webcomic stuff done early this week due to the convention, I'll work on the drawings and give the art a little extra attention. She's my baby, even though I created her 21 years ago and she hasn't made it anywhere but a sloppy pencil webcomic with low readership. For me, she represents a love of writing that doesn't go away no matter how long it's been or how it's expressed, and she represents loving an idea to the point that it's always a part of you, your art, how you move forward.

I still love her and always will.

 

Beginner

I've mentioned a couple times in the last few entries that I consider myself to be primarily a writer but also enjoy being a hobbyist in music and visual art. Lately I've been spending a LOT more time with my hobbies--and spending more time with them than I have been with my "primary" art--but I know it won't lead to anything professional. Probably not even if I wanted it to (which I don't). I just basically want to be confident in these arts. For them to be things I can do. Things I won't claim to be able to do and then feel embarrassed of how much of an amateur I am when people look at or hear my product.

So I have to keep in mind the lessons I learned as a writer. Progression generally requires two things:

1. Practice

2. Guidance

Over-reliance on either leads to crashing and burning. (Or at least not getting anywhere.) I've been practicing drawing for my whole life, and have been maintaining a tight schedule on a webcomic that requires 10 drawings a week for over ten years. But except for occasional peeks at references and even more occasional consultation of a drawing book, I have had next to no guidance on my art, and I think it shows. For instance:

Here's a drawing I did when I was eleven.

Sometime within the next couple years, I met an art teacher and got a few tips from her. This happened.

Clearly still not high art, but there's a huge difference--and it didn't come from just trying the same thing over again. 

A couple years later I reproduced the cover of a book I liked, paying a lot of attention to the source material. I got this.

 
Years later, I can do a decently sophisticated, but not-anything-special piece of pencil art.

I still pretty much have no idea how light really works and really suck at doing clothing that looks like clothing and what are backgrounds anyway but . . . I mean, that's not too bad for being self-taught except for one art teacher who wasn't even actively giving me lessons. (I was helping in the art room at my after-school program, and I picked up some stuff.) 

Nowadays, in my pencil sketch webcomic, most of the characters are drawn hastily and sketchily, but the idea of them comes through for the purpose. There are a lot of frames like this.

A lot of scribbles, more or less nonexistent backgrounds, and low on the detail. But it serves the purpose. I'm happy with it. I probably plateaued with this a long time ago.

When I started drawing more cartoons as of recently, I was kinda tossed back to the drawing board (haha). It was a new style for me and I was much more used to working in pencil. Color is hard. It's a whole different dimension of being confused by how light works, and it's so cool when it works out right, but most of the time it doesn't. I was paying a lot more attention to very small things that I wouldn't on subjects I felt more comfortable with, like exact proportions and little bitty details. And the end product was much more satisfying than the sloppy, stagnant cartoon doodles of the Simpsons characters I used to do in middle school.

(I'm still clearly baffled by how light works tho guys.)

I used references for all of these little sketches, and after a while of playing with them, I now have a handle on some of the shapes that make up these characters. So I can give them different expressions or try different angles, or put them in different clothes. But I had to start with something not too ambitious, and just . . . draw shapes. Draw faces. Play with colors. See what comes easily and what doesn't.

And now, though I'm not going to go into details, I'm working on some music stuff I've never tried before. The progress is . . . well, slow. I'm brand new to it, and with my music theory background being quite solid, I guess I expect more from myself. I expect to be able to plunge forward and pick things up quickly, even though this category of music stuff is nowhere in my vocabulary. I have an advantage only in that I know how to read music already and I have a very good ear--I know if I'm doing something wrong instinctively, and can dig around to figure out how to fix it. 

But I'm also looking up and reproducing very, very basic beginner stuff. The stuff I can imagine child beginners being taught--not actual how-to-play-this-song instruction, but positioning, best practice, terminology. Of course an impatient music nerd expects to be able to jump right into the part where you play songs. I'm working on that, but I'm also a complete beginner and I have to remember that. I'm at the point where I can't do anything without a lot of guidance, but that's good because it means I'm constantly checking in to make sure I'm not learning bad habits.

And now, I'm dealing with an awful lot of practice.

I literally started with this less than two days ago and I've already seen practice work wonders. Things that seemed ridiculously difficult--things I couldn't really imagine seeming natural or easy for me--fell into place with repetition. I keep reminding myself of that every time the next step is hard. Practice will smooth the edges off. Practice will make impossible into difficult into doable into easy. Practice will build the stairs for me. I can't climb by skipping too many stairs. It's just going to make the journey up the staircase harder if I don't build every step.

Writing is like this. There are so many steps. You have to learn letters, then learn words, then learn how to use sentences. There's so much right at the beginning that we master readers don't even think about anymore. But then we use those skills to tell stories. And storytelling also has its alphabet; there's sentence structure and punctuation to worry about, and there's character development, and there's plotting, and setting, and bringing a message the way you want to bring a message. It's so much and it doesn't come fast--or it doesn't seem fast while you're building that staircase. But once it's built, you can use it to climb up and down, turn around, pause where you want to, focus on where it takes you rather than what the steps are.

I can do a lot for my eventual competence and mastery by focusing on my own individual stairs and the next few ahead--while still admiring people who have already nailed down their stairs and are climbing to places I want to go. Sometimes watching them and the ease with which they use the stairs as a tool can be a little intimidating: why can't I do that? How long will it take before it's that effortless for me? Where will I even go once I have enough stairs? Why is this one stair giving me so much trouble when the previous ones weren't this bad?

Practice. It won't be like this forever. Keep looking at the people who have benefited from practice, and respect that countless hours you didn't see are behind that effortless ascent. If you want to follow in their footsteps on your own path, you've got to be the one crafting the stairs.
 

Bad Fairy reader list is OPEN!

Hi readers,

In an attempt to get off my bum and start editing this book, I am now announcing a request for test readers. I have a small list already but even if you think you're on it, you might consider commenting here or contacting me privately (use the "contact" button on my blog for options) if you're not sure. If you're joining, I need an e-mail address for our communication, so your best bet is sending me an e-mail message unless you have a question.

What is this book?

Bad Fairy is a Sleeping Beauty retelling featuring the wicked fairy from the legend as the protagonist. (It is not related to anything associated with the Disney version of this tale; it draws inspiration from the older fairy tales.) This particular volume is the sequel to another book I've written which is already represented by my agent, but there's a chance this one will be published first if I get a book deal--it contains the more iconic and familiar elements of the Sleeping Beauty story everyone knows, while the previous book reads more like a prequel and ends before the princess is born.

Do I have to have read the first one?

No. In fact, I'd like my test readers to be some mixture of people who have read the first one and people who have not, so I can get some idea of whether the second book can be read without the first one. (It's very hard to be objective about that sort of thing.) If I were to have my way, the books would be published in chronological order, but if the first ends up as a prequel I'll have to deal with it. That said, if you would prefer to read the first before reading the second, I can arrange that.

What are you looking for in a test reader / what do I have to do?

Whatever you want. I'm looking for some kind of significant feedback, so I don't want "it was really good," but other than that your approach is up to you. I'm fine with it if you want to go for line edits and in-document comments. Or I'm fine with it if you want to send me e-mails with summed-up reactions and suggestions. Or anything in between.

My preferred method is to send a reader the first three chapters and wait for feedback on those before following up with the rest. This system has the following benefits:

• I'm not sending my entire book to someone who might never give me any feedback.
• Readers get to decide based on three chapters whether the book is for them, and only ask for more if they're enjoying it.
• It's a bite-sized piece that isn't too overwhelming--for the reader or for me in addressing comments. 

You can decide after three chapters if you want to be sent more chapters or the entire book.

How long is it?

It's not as long as the first Bad Fairy. It's about 97,000 words/320 pages.


Can you say more about the book so we can decide if we're interested?

Here's the blurb:

Delia Morningstar, fresh out of fairy school, believes a grand destiny awaits her. But nobody wants to hire a precocious know-it-all with spooky interests and half-human ancestry. When her last efforts to find a home for her passion end in disaster, Delia's off on her own . . . investigating the land of the dead.  Because that's what dark fairies do for fun.

Determined to secretly meddle in the affairs of those who rejected her--for their own good--Delia uses her afterlife connections to help the king and queen of her kingdom conceive the child they've always wanted. But she didn't count on the connection she would have with that princess, and a few sloppy decisions bring the blame for cursing the baby down on Delia's head. Faced with the wrath of her old enemies the three good fairies, Delia may have to undertake extreme measures to stay alive long enough to save the princess from death. . . . 

Appropriately creepy doodle of Delia
drawn for me by Tumblr artist soapybacon

Hope to hear from some of you soon.

Wednesday Factoid: Artist

Today's Wednesday Factoid is: Are you an artist?

In the loosest sense of that word, the answer is "of course." Given that writing is a type of art, I think it's safe to say I qualify.

And regarding other forms of art, I'm a pretty decent singer.

  

But in the more traditional sense of the word, when people think "artist," they often think of visual art, so I'll answer that too. I don't actually consider myself an "artist," but I do an awful lot of art.

Most of the time I don't take it particularly seriously, and I don't think I'm unusually talented at it, but I do enjoy it and I do use visual art as a medium for conveying ideas pretty frequently.

If I spend a lot of time on something, it comes out pretty nice--but I don't often spend a lot of time on drawings. Most of my drawing is for webcomics, and to be honest they're hastily doodled and used primarily to carry a story or a message.

Example of probably the best realistic pencil sketches I can do:

BABYFOOT YESSS

Example of messy pencil sketch for my fantasy story webcomic, Negative One: 

Example of chibi-style color art I usually use for my joke comic for writers, So You Write: 

 
Sometimes I go all the way to "superdeformed" style.

And sometimes I copy other cartoon styles for some reason, like I did for my Halloween Party poster. I do pretty well reproducing existing styles if I have a reference.

But yeah, if you asked me to say yes or no--nah, I'm not really an artist.

 

Novel Update: Ace of Arts

I'm pleased to announce that I did indeed start writing my new novel on November 1.

I didn't post about it on Monday because I figured back when I was writing Bad Fairy 2 I established a tradition of book updates on Thursdays, and I assumed I would have written more of the book by today. Life kinda got in the way, though, and when I had time to write, I didn't feel like it.

That said, having 3600 words of a new book done is pretty badass.

Also, I doodled a Megan.

Blurry doodle
That thing on her nose is a nose ring, btw, don't know if it's clear

I got a better "look" at her in this first chapter, and though there weren't any surprises for me about how she came across, I'm not sure how we'll I'll handle someone with such a pessimistic world view for an entire novel. I don't want the book to be about her becoming an optimist or anything--it's more about learning the circumstances under which it is beneficial to broaden one's horizons and which it is beneficial to stand one's ground--but I just hope the complaining and negativity doesn't get grating for the reader. I guess that's something I'll only find out about when test reader time comes.

My first chapter is about Megan going to a gallery showing in which she has a piece. She's clearly there reluctantly, but is also curious about what people think of her work. I managed to establish a few constants of her life: that she does not expect to ever "actually" make anything of herself or go to college or succeed as an artist; that she has a complicated relationship with her older sister; that her art teacher has been in her life for a fair amount of time and knows details about her living situation; and that there's something mysterious about how she comes upon the subjects of her drawings.

I also established a few tone and setting details through background details. At one point her teacher pulls out a phone, which suggests it's in modern times or thereabouts because otherwise she wouldn't have a mobile phone. (This is kinda significant because the old short story from which I stole the characters was written in 1999, and nobody had cell phones.) And one of the art projects Megan looks at in the gallery is a humorous depiction of the artist's coming out as gay, which suggests she's going to school in an area that would allow such a piece to be part of a high school art show. And Megan gets to the gallery on a city bus and has no plans to get home (the buses stop running while she's still out); her "plan" was just to stay out all night until the buses start up in the morning, which makes it pretty clear nobody's following up on her safety or making sure she's taken care of. (She's also clearly not intimidated by the idea of hanging out in public places during the wee hours, which suggests she does not consider herself particularly vulnerable.)

I think the next chapter will involve some introduction to her artwork method and some interaction with her sister. And by Chapter 3 I definitely need to introduce Brady, who's really important to the rest of the story--a boy in her homeroom who is instrumental in her figuring out the rest of her life. I'm really looking forward to finding out how it all comes together. :)

Bad Fairy 2 status report: Chapter 22

I didn't get around to writing more chapters this week, so I just have the one. I think I might just have to save finishing the book for the weekend. And hopefully not completely get destroyed in the process. ::goes away to bite nails::

Words: 2,706 for Chapter 22.

Basic details: Delia attends a birthday party for her friends' daughter and gathers some ideas to make an appropriate gift for the princess's naming ceremony.

The good: New characters appear--sort of--and the birthday party for Fiona and Drake's daughter Lilac is kind of a neat way to reestablish that Delia isn't really a part of this world that's moving on with its everyday activities. I also just really wanted a way to feature her friends and family one more time before I end the book, and throw in some atmospheric foreshadowing. Also, though I've made several references to people who aren't heteronormative among people Delia has met in the land of the dead, this chapter features the first reference to same-sex attractions between actual living people. Hooray for incidental queerness.

The bad: I just hope it doesn't read as filler. Also, an unexpected conversation between Delia and some other party guests defaulted to the usual fixation on Delia being ~different~ from other people and I'm pretty sick of that schtick, but I guess she is too. I like to remind readers that this is the kind of treatment she gets when she hangs out with other fairies, but I don't like how repetitive it gets.

Chibi Delia!

The quotes: 

Drake interrupts Delia's getting-to-know-you session with party guests Mariel and Ruby:

Drake appeared at the head of the table with a plate full of fragrant lamb meat. “Hello, ladies,” he said. “How about that, Delia, you’ve finally learned to tolerate small talk?”

I looked away from him. “Our talk isn’t small.” It kind of was, though.

“Just like a man, always assuming women’s chats are empty,” said Ruby.

“You were talking about flowers, you hens.”

“Flowers are my life’s work, you goat.”

When Fiona's daughter and her circle friends are discussing academic frustrations and Drake half-seriously suggests Delia could tutor them (like she tutored Fiona and Drake when they were in the same place):

“I don’t do tutoring now. I think it’s best if you learn from someone who does things in a more typical way. Or you could end up like me.”

Fiona made her explosive one-notch-below-panic face. “Delia! What a thing to say. You talk about ‘ending up’ like you like it’s a bad thing. You’re very successful!”

I smiled. “Lovely of you to say, Fiona. But most people probably don’t want to become lonely old ladies who live in a tower talking to birds.”

“That’s not what she does,” Fiona muttered. “And you’re not old!”

“Not to mention she assures me at every turn that she is not lonely,” my mother said, elbowing me.

For the record, Delia's only twenty-nine at this point. She's kidding about being an old lady.

Delia making plans to sneak into that famous party:

I would have to hide myself completely. And fairies—including my old enemies—would be in that room. I would have to sneak in and out undetected.

And if anyone sensed me, I would be exposed.

I might fail.

There was a very good chance I would fail, in fact.

And the consequences could be life-threatening.

For me, and for the princess.

 

Published short story: "Her Mother's Child"

Woo-hoo! More than a year after I got an offer on my story, it's in print. ;)

My short story "Her Mother's Child" is a coming-of-age story in a gently magical secondary-world setting, featuring goddess spirituality, queer perspectives, and a protagonist with an unusual disability.

You can read it in the Summer 2015 issue of Kaleidotrope!

As of the time I'm writing this it only has one comment on the actual publisher's page, so it looks a little lonely; if you read it and like it, consider saying what you thought. :) So far I mostly just have congratulations on Facebook and people on Tumblr reblogging with tags like "#this is so good." Haha.

In celebration of the release I also did some cool concept art and figured I'd post that here too. It's one possible way the protagonist's daughter might have looked, though you can imagine her however you want. :)

Ten Years of Webcomics

In May 2005, after being inspired by some non-traditional text-heavy webcomics, I decided that I too could tell stories in graphic format, and my webcomic Negative One was born.

It was just an experiment for the first month or so; I wanted to see if I could do it, and I knew that webcomic audiences tend to get rabid if artists don't update on time, so keeping to a set schedule was very important to me. But I settled into it easily and managed to bang out a new issue every Friday for the first month. I can handle this, I thought. And handle it I did.

For the next ten years.

On May 20, 2015, Negative One celebrates ten years of weekly updates, without having ever missed an issue, been late, or gone on hiatus. That's 522 issues. 11,400 panels. And a lot of busy Fridays. I'm holding a contest to celebrate. There will be three prizewinners, with winners being allowed to pick from comic-related gifts/art or just store credit to any online retailer. Prizes are worth $40, $20, and $10 respectively. And there are multiple ways to enter--taking a quiz, sending me fan art, submitting questions for the characters to answer . . . it's all in the link!

ENTER

For the folks who've never read my webcomic before, I want to tell you a little about why it's special and maybe entice you to read it. Since the contest to win prizes is open for over a month, there's time to read the archives and get caught up if you want to. ;)

Negative One begins as a personal story that alternates between two young women struggling with extraordinary problems. The storytelling involves first-person reflections of their quiet adventures, rendered in light dialogue and heavy introspection, accompanying pencil sketches of the characters. (Yes, pencil sketches. It's not inked.)

Chinese-American New Yorker Meri Lin finds herself pregnant unexpectedly, and with her parents disapproving of the baby's white father, she battles anxiety and growing worries about raising her child. When baby Amanda is born with unheard-of superpowers and Meri Lin's life mutates into a surreal unknown, she and her devoted partner Fred are on their own dealing with stuff they've never heard of outside of science fiction. Her story is about family and fear and all the joys and terrors of mothering a special child, and it also leads to an alternately inspiring and depressing portrayal of how she and Fred handle grief when their worst fears are realized.

The other storyline follows Adele, a young woman from another dimension. At the beginning of her tale she is in training to be a master prophet under the tutelage of her teacher Tabitha. She has very mixed feelings about her ultimate mission: her teacher, who is from our world, is sending her there permanently to find and teach the next human with prophetic abilities, but in her journey she'll lose most of her important memories and never be able to return. She'll have to live as an alien in a strange world and figure out how to build her life from there, and she'll have to leave her family and her beloved teacher and most of her identity behind. Adele's relationship with her teacher and somewhat estranged family, her devotion to her art and her small rebellions, and her eventual travels in our world are at the center of her story.

As the story goes on, I add three more narrators: the first two are male characters from other dimensions who travel to the human world accidentally during a sort of interdimensional earthquake, and the third narrator is Meri Lin's baby. She starts narrating her own comics when she's about two years old, and she basically becomes the main/focus character of the webcomic.

To be honest, the comic's flaws include pretty poor art most of the time and nearly plotless storytelling, with a very slow pace; I know that means it really isn't for everyone since it's almost entirely character-oriented and rooted in the everyday existence of extraordinary people who don't save the world or do anything but battle personal demons and develop/destroy relationships with each other. But I did create the comic for a semi-indulgent reason: I wanted to take the characters from an unpublishable fantasy series I'd written and share them with the world in such a way that I didn't have to worry about marketability and expectations, and now it's just a place I can tell the kind of story I want to tell with the characters I care about. So that's what I've done here.

But if you like very nuanced character arcs and want to see explorations of complicated people, you'll probably find yourself getting invested in the story once you get used to it. Meri Lin and Fred may be raising a child who isn't like any real baby out in the world, but they also have some relatable struggles: they wrestle with discipline and "me" time and how to cultivate their intimacy despite what they're facing, and Meri Lin learns to wear a mask to cover her grief, and when family and friends try to help her she has to learn how much to shut out and how much to invite in. Adele deals with being closer to her teacher--a foreigner--than she is to her own mother, and she shoulders crushing responsibility as a very talented prophet who also sometimes needs to make mistakes as a teenage girl. She wonders what kind of love and support can be available to someone like her when she comes to a world where she is a stranger, and when others depend on her for her mystical guidance and perspective, she's conflicted about what it means to be needed.

My extradimensional characters Weaver and Dax have some complicated struggles too. Weaver has to deal with literal imprisonment at the beginning of his stay in our world, and later there are themes of brotherhood, isolation, and kind of being the local goofy genius. (Seriously, when Meggie showed me Guardians of the Galaxy, Rocket reminded me so much of Weaver.) Dax deals with loyalty and faith/spirituality and the meaning of companionship and strength; he's kind of a gentle giant type. And he smokes some weed. Heh.

And of course the story follows a ton of complicated stuff as Meri Lin's baby makes her way into the world. As a very small child whose first understanding of herself incorporates the experience of scaring the crap out of people, she's at times very fragile and at other times the strongest and most independent child you'll ever see. She is faced with fitting in and standing out in unprecedented ways, and figuring out how to meet her own needs given some of her ordinary and extraordinary desires makes for some unique opportunities for me as a storyteller. 

It may seem like a weird thing to say about a story in which three out of the five narrators aren't human, but the story also incorporates a lot of diversity and underrepresented perspectives. Obviously all the aliens have that whole Extreme Outsider narrative, but then I do deal with more ordinary marginalization as well. Meri Lin is the daughter of Chinese immigrants (who later moved back to China), and her romantic partner is a white man, so some of her story deals with the unique issues associated with their relationship, and from raising a mixed-race child. As for the baby, when she begins to tell her story, she really has no concept of race, and isn't frequently recognized as being mixed due to the prominence of other peculiarities, but she is.

The story also features a child from an abusive/neglectful home, a major character who is a black homeless mother who has epilepsy, another mixed-race family with children from different fathers, a white single divorced mother who's a business owner, and a black man who's a business owner. A lot of the supporting characters are not white and aren't necessarily in typical living/working situations. There's also a secondary character with severe mental impairments who receives support and care from some of the cast members, but she's also from another dimension. The story is not about characters being Asian or being black or having illnesses, but those aspects of the characters are incorporated into their stories--as part of who they are without being a focal plot point.

I've spent ten years bringing little bits of this story to the Internet every Friday, and though I don't have many loyal readers, I think most of the people still reading are quiet about their enjoyment of it; I don't get too much interaction or comments. So I figured as part of the ten-year celebration I'd make a few posts about the comic and see if it attracts any new blood. It still gets a little spike of visitors every Friday so I know some people out there are still paying attention, but it would be so cool if some new people dropped by and read one of the things that takes up my time every single week.

Check out Negative One!

Happy anniversary to meeeeeee!

Personal Digest Saturday: May 9 – May 15

Life news this week: 

• I guess there's not really an official big announcement, but the Next Generation Indie Book Awards posted this list of winners and finalists recently and I'm on it, so . . . here we go, my fourth book award. I'm the winner in the LGBT category. YAyyyyYY!
  
• Saturday was Spend Money Day. I had to buy a bunch of stuff for my upcoming trip and I hate waiting for the last minute so shopping happened. Got new shoes and a new purse. I also made a new video, redecorated my apartment, and made cookies and biscuits for my mom, all on the same day. It was kind of a busy scene.
  
• Sunday was Mother's Day and I hung out with my friend Sarah in the morning (went out to eat at Panera) and then I went to my mommy's house. Where I fed her biscuits and cookies and also brought tomato soup, oh and I gave her a skirt for her present. And Lindsay came over too! Hadn't seen her since January. She stayed all day, and Patricia called on Skype so we could "hang out" with her and baby Ash, who provided quite a show for us pushing his mommy down for fun and making all his adorable babbles for us.
  
• Got some edits done on a short story that is going to be published soon and sent it in to the editor. Woo-hoo! Done!
  
• I created a contest for my Negative One webcomic readers to enter. Since the comic hits TEN YEARS AS A WEBCOMIC on May 20, I'm accepting entries into this contest and I made a little trivia quiz to go with it (helps earn points for the contest). And I drew a little illustration to accompany it. The contest is here.
  
• Jeaux Day was food at IHOP and inconsequential hanging out at my house. We're such nerds!

New reviews of my book:

• Three-star review from Rift Vegan on Goodreads.
  
• Four-star review from Eli on Goodreads.
  
• Four-star review from BooksAndTea on Goodreads.

Places featured:

• The 2015 Winners and Finalists List for the Next Generation Indie Book Awards is posted, and I'm on it.
  
• Someone on Tumblr is kinda gloating that they got their library to order my book. Thought that was kind of neat. :)

Reading progress:

• Completed reading: Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. Five-star review.
• Currently reading: Filler Bunny by Jhonen Vasquez.

New singing performances:

Here I'm singing "Orinoco Flow" by Enya.


 
New drawings:

The illustration for my Ten Year Contest for Negative One.

Webcomic Negative One Issue 0522: "Birds and Bees."





New videos:


Letters to an Asexual #27: My video about aromanticism! 

New photos:  

The donut I got as a reward for winning the Next Generation Indie Book Award.

My latest wardrobe addition: Another Steven Universe shirt. (I now have four if you're counting.)

And here are my haircut comparison photos since the 15th has come and gone again:

Back, February 2014	Back, May 2015
Front, February 2014	Front, May 2015

Social media counts: YouTube subscribers: 4,584 for swankivy (19 new this week), 465 for JulieSondra (5 new). Twitter followers: 647 for swankivy (3 new), 945 for JulieSondra (1 new). Facebook: 278 friends (no change) and 163 followers (1 new) for swankivy, 557 likes for JulieSondra (2 new), 54 likes for Negative One (no change), 104 likes for So You Write (no change). Tumblr followers: 1,992 (11 new).

Writing the Marginalized

Here's something I've been giving a lot of thought to: writing about characters from marginalized groups.

With the (somewhat) recent push for more diverse literature (see We Need Diverse Books and some great interviews at DiversifYA), it's clear that the landscape of publishing is tilting toward a desire to include both characters from underrepresented backgrounds and authors who are of those descriptions themselves (regardless of whether the characters and stories they publish feature narratives that mirror their own lives). But I have also seen, almost across the board, a message to "majority" authors: don't be afraid to write The Other, and don't always default to writing People Like You (because it is NOT a neutral choice to do so) . . . but if you try to do it, you have a responsibility to do the research and get it right to the best of your ability.

I'm thinking about this now because I wrote a story about a trans girl a few years ago and I recently started submitting it to magazines, and it just got accepted.

Why do I, a cis woman, want to write about a trans girl? Especially since the story is almost entirely about her quest to be recognized as a girl by her alternate-world gender-segregated culture?

I mean, that's not my struggle. That's not my narrative. Why was I led to "hijack" that story as my own for purposes of fantasy coming-of-age literature and use it to forward my publishing career?

That's obviously not how I was thinking of what I was doing, but I'm sure if someone wanted to ask leading questions about my motivation, they could sound like that.

My reason, I think, is that I have a fair number of trans people in my life and in my community; as an asexual person who's active in asexuality awareness activism, I see tons of interaction with and intersection with trans folks, some of whom are also asexual. And what I've seen is that there isn't much science fiction and fantasy (or much literature at all) that puts trans people at the center of their stories. They're almost always a symbol of something, or a learning experience for someone else, or a background character, or (worse) a joke. When I wrote my story, I was (and still am) dedicated to hearing more trans people talk about their experiences, and I have both sought those viewpoints out (in literature and in blogs/videos) and listened to my friends talk. These were the people and messages I was surrounding myself with, so it seemed natural that out of the more than two dozen short stories I've written, a trans person would pop up in one of them.

Old sketch of my protagonist
at age 8

But I do worry, as a cis person who has written a trans girl's story, that when my short story is published, it may let people down or disappoint them. I don't worry about this the same way I do when, say, I write about male characters as a female author, because male people are not generally a group that is oppressed for their maleness (unless it is in association with another identity, like how black maleness is processed as more dangerous than white maleness in so many of these tragic stories in the news lately). I worry about doing it right in the case of writing a trans girl because the last thing trans people need is a cis person repackaging their struggles and getting all the nuances wrong.

However, I do know that some readers will automatically turn their noses up at anything that doesn't mirror their experience and tend to have outraged reactions. I even had this with my asexuality book in the editing stages even though I was writing as an asexual person; one of my readers in particular wrote me a heated letter accusing me of presenting my own experience as the only true asexual experience because my introduction (the only personal content in the book) gave some of my background, and one of my later readers implied that I was "appropriating" language (from my own community?) because I just wanted to make money. You absolutely can do everything right and still have people go into reading your work absolutely certain that you must have screwed it up. But because I am far more concerned with actually doing a good job than I am with getting my Feelings Hurt over people thinking I suck, I would rather listen to even the criticisms I find uncharitable and see if there's anything I can learn to make my work better.

I don't know if people are going to read my story about a trans girl and get mad that I as a cis person want to tell a trans person's story (especially since her transness is so central to the story), but I do hope they understand I am not presenting her experience as universal. (Especially since she lives in an alternate world where there's elemental magic.) Everything she sees and feels in association with her trans experience is something I've seen expressed or explicitly stated by a trans person more than once, and the traits and presentations I've chosen for my character are kind of a mixture of typical and less typical.

Here is a weird little self-analysis of elements of my story divided by how common they are in stories about trans people.

Pretty typical: 

• The protagonist, Lihill, was identified as male at birth based on genitals, but knew from early childhood that she had a feminine gender identity.
• Lihill prefers to play with girls and does very typical "girly" things like playing house, playing with dolls, enjoying cooking and sewing, and liking hair accessories.
• Lihill feels very strongly about having her hair long.
• Her father is aggressive and many of his appearances in the story involve him shaming Lihill for her tendencies. He's not portrayed as a nuanced character; he's an uncomplicated, blunt man with strict ideas about gender.
• Her father continues to misgender her even after her identity is public and established. Her grandmother makes reference to how she "used to be a boy." Her sister expresses that it's weird to not have a brother anymore.
• Her mother misunderstands her identity, believing she just doesn't want to be a "tough guy" like her dad rather than the reality that she isn't a guy at all.
• She doesn't fight the binary her society is divided into; she just wants to be sorted into the other side.
• While thinking about things she hates about her life, she does once wonder whether she actually hates herself.
• She gets bullied at her school (though it is based on a misconception that she is making the other kids in her class look bad by association rather than directly because she said she wanted to go to the girls' school). 
• She's terrified of maturation because she doesn't want to get a beard.
• There's no specific indication of what her sexual orientation is, but because of a couple places where she seems really disturbed at the idea of having a wife, she seems to assume she is straight.

More nuanced/less typical: 

• She does not try to change her name ("Lihill" is a masculine name in her alternate world culture) and doesn't have a "secret" name for her girl identity.
• She never expresses that she hates her body.
• She doesn't like the "born in the wrong body" idea--it just doesn't sit right with her.
• She actively enjoys some of the things her culture tells her are masculine, like climbing trees. She also gets in a fist-fight at one point and feels like she did pretty well considering she was outnumbered.
• When presented with the idea that she might want to help other trans people once she finds her own way, she admits to herself that she doesn't want to be "inspirational"--she just wants to be left alone to be a girl.
• The story's ending suggests she will continue to have a difficult life and that being read as a girl will become more difficult as she gets older. (There is no medical transition available.)
• Every ally Lihill has, no matter how sympathetic, misunderstands at least one thing about her and makes mistakes; she has no one perfect supporter.
• Lihill is not automatically a natural at everything feminine she tries to do, and she is actually good at some masculine things she is assigned to do.
• Apparently in her society the possibility of a child being born intersex is more widely accepted and acknowledged than the possibility of a child being transgender.
• Lihill doesn't buck the system consistently right from the beginning; she goes through a pretty long phase of survival-oriented going with the flow while becoming more depressed about it.
• Though she does say she can't picture herself even having a future sometimes, she doesn't explicitly consider suicide or self-harm. ("I'd rather be dead than the wrong gender" is certainly something some trans people think about, but it didn't fit this character at all--her idealism and desire for survival was too strong for her thoughts to veer that way.) 
• Instead of there being one "male" set of ways and one "female" set of ways, there are actually four in this society, associated with elements. Two of the elements, Fire and Water, are the extremes of masculinity and femininity (respectively), and Air and Earth are the center-masculine and center-feminine (respectively) elements. Though there's no neutral in the society, they do recognize gradations. (However, Lihill actually identifies as the "most feminine" element; she doesn't consider herself an "in between" or "middle" identity.)

As an author who thinks it's important to write about those with marginalized identities, I consciously chose to avoid some tropes while incorporating some very common trans narratives, and I was aiming for a good balance of both (rejecting some overdone "tragic trans person" elements while adopting certain bits that many many trans people whose stories I've read have described as part of their lives). I agree with some others that it's very important that authors don't consider ourselves restricted to writing only viewpoints we're personally living or have lived. We do need to step out of our comfort zones and consider presenting characters with minority or marginalized identities as worthy protagonists with stories that aren't just "for" reading by those with the same identities. We need stories by those with marginalized identities too, and we need to make room for them since they are guaranteed to have perspectives that will be valuable and probably new to those who don't have their experience. But I think it would be wrong to say only trans authors can/should write trans characters, and those authors who attempt it without personal experience simply need to do their best to present it responsibly and sensitively. I hope my story has done that.

Very few of my stories involve autobiographical viewpoints. In my short stories, I have only ever written one asexual aromantic protagonist (and she's in a queerplatonic partnership, unlike me). That one's in consideration by a magazine right now and we'll see if it hits. This story about a trans girl just got accepted and will be published soon. My other two stories that have found success have a protagonist whose gender is not revealed (with a focus character who is agoraphobic), and a protagonist whose orientation is probably bisexual--maybe homosexual demi-heterosexual would be more specific? (with a focus character who is lesbian). 

I also have a fair number of male characters and romantic characters and characters who have beliefs I don't share and people far younger or older than I am and characters who are married or engaged or are parents. Some of those identities didn't require much "research" because there are so many presentations of them in our society that any one I choose will probably be pretty close to accurate and won't reflect on the group as a whole as a rare representation of those identities. And some of them did require more reading and checking for understanding with readers who have lived those experiences. It depends.

But I do want to say for the record that I don't write characters with diverse backgrounds because I'm trying to do the right thing for diversity in a trend, or because I feel like it's my cis able-bodied neurotypical white girl responsibility to champion these voices in mainstream venues, or because I have a weird outsider's/ally's fascination with any one of them. It's because I know people with these identities who are part of my daily life and whom I love, and because they are part of the fabric of my reality, it naturally occurs to me sometimes that my characters might be like them. Some of my decisions about how to frame my characters have been deliberate and some have just evolved from how I understand the people in my life and in my communities. However, at the end of the day, characters are their own people, and they are never explicitly based on people I know. Experiences my friends and acquaintances have moving through the world with less common and marginalized identities do help inform my understandings of their challenges and triumphs, but I don't outright appropriate them to tell some kind of hijacked, oversimplified, distorted amalgam of their stories. I am still telling the story of a fictional character every time I write something like this.

But I know ignorance can cause good intentions to do more harm than good sometimes, and it's hard to know what you're ignorant about. I guess what I'm saying by expressing my anxiety about this is that I acknowledge that I'm not perfect, and that my story may not be perfect, and that I understand why some trans people can be wary of cis people writing trans characters, and that I know better than to guarantee that my story isn't one of the bad ones. I also think the story legitimately isn't about much beyond an "issue story" of my character fighting to be recognized as her gender, though I do think we need explicit "issue stories" as well as stories in which characters are just incidentally trans. I hope it's valuable to readers, or that it at least entertains and does not actively damage.

I guess I'm probably overthinking the importance of this, but as I've said before, some of us are our own worst critics.