Earth Music

My story, Earth Music, is now available on Syntax & Salt!

　
It features a young alien named Ve, who is part of a mission to visit Earth. Her people had found the Voyager Golden Record (a real record humanity sent into space in the 1970s that contains pictures of Earth, greetings to extraterrestrials, and a selection of sound and music recordings), and are coming to Earth on a friendly mission of peace and exploration.


Ve is blind, and thinks this will make her the perfect ambassador because the humans won't be afraid of her. She is also fluent in English and has memorized some Earth songs. Her favorite is Beethoven's Fifth. Maybe the humans will want to sing with her.

　

Explaining my inspiration for Earth Music would be giving away the ending, so I'll just say it was a news story and my friend encouraged me on Twitter to take the idea into SPAAAAAACE.

Sidenote: My friend is also named Jen, also from Oneonta, also had a story in Syntax & Salt. Clearly Jens from Oneonta are their ideal writers.
(And you should also read Jen's story, Daddy's Girl: http://syntaxandsalt.com/portfolio/daddys-girl-by-jennifer-r-donohue/)


　

I love all of my stories, but this one holds a special place in my heart. There isn't enough disability rep in sci-fi, especially not where it isn't the entire point of the story.

I feel about Ve's blindness the way I feel about my disability: it just is. She doesn't need to accept it or overcome it. It's an integral part of who she is and I would not be telling the same story if she were sighted, but it isn't the most important part of her or the story.

It just is.

　

And talking about disability brings me to my next bit of news, and the latest in a series of "What was I thinking when I agreed to do this?" moments.

This Tuesday, I'm going to be one of three guest speakers at Bassett Hospital in Cooperstown, talking to an auditorium of around a hundred people about disability and etiquette.