I'm a Geek (and I have an Announcement)

Now that I've signed the contract, I can finally announce that my short story The Falling Marionette is going to be in an upcoming issue of the webzine Expanded Horizons!

It's "speculative fiction for the rest of us" - which means no straight, white, cisgender, able bodied men characters, basically. The majority of the authors are from marginalized backgrounds, too.

It's a really great site and I'm so excited that my story about disability in the future is going to be on it and I can share it with you.

I'll write more about the story when the issue goes live.

　

And now for the post I was originally planning for today before I got that news...

　

I'm a geek.

Need proof?

I've had fish named Jedi, Binary, Draco (partially after the constellation, partially after the Malfoy), Fishola Tesla, and Ripley (I can't remember if it was after Ellen Ripley from Alien or Ripley's Believe it or Not; probably both).

And here's my sporadically-updated parody blog where I mess with song lyrics to make them about zombies and chemical elements.

　

So yes. Geek.

And the older I get, the more I realize that is the most important part of who I am.

There are a lot of labels I can put on myself. I'm female, disabled, Italian and Irish, a writer... And there are a lot of things I'm good at or interested in. Writing, sparkly little doodads, cross stitch... But none of those are me; they're just incidental.

I was always a weird kid. I got into Pokemon when I was 16 but was watching Frasier when I was 9, if that gives you any idea of how hard it was for me to make friends. I went through the obligatory Disney princess phase, struggled in school despite being smart, and spent most of my adolescent years floundering around going "Am I an artist? Should I buy a lot of yarn and get really into crocheting? What do I do now?"

And then one day, there was a Star Wars marathon. "You like space and Indiana Jones," my mom said. "You'll probably like this."

That was an understatement, to say the least.

　
I guess I hadn't watched that much sci-fi up until then, but I just loved it more than I can even explain. Even the admittedly awful prequels and Binks-who-must-not-be-named were just so magical. I wanted to immerse myself in this world and learn obscure facts about it and name pets after the characters.

It was like I suddenly understood myself.

"Oh, I'm a geek. That's what I am. Finally."


I've found myself in my geekdom. In the crews of the Enterprise and Millennium Falcon and Serenity. In superheroes and mutants and aliens. In the corners of the Internet where people get my references and "lol" when I say "So when Luke and Leia kissed, would it be accurate to say they were... looking for love in Alderaan places?"

When people ask me about my dream writing goals, I say I want to get a novel published and have movies made out of my stories. But I think what I mean by that is that I want people to love my work enough to do that. I want my stories to help other lost little geeks find themselves.