Hey, real quick post.
I have a story in a book about dragons and bicycles and feminism… In… SPAAAACE! We are currently kickstarting it, and have a week to go. If you want to help out an amazing publisher, Pay some authors, and get a super cool book in return, please consider contributing to our Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ellyblue/dragon-bike-fantastical-feminist-bicycle-stories?ref=dw01dv&token=3e277b14
Thursday, October 24, 2019
Thursday, October 17, 2019
Seven sisters
Light pollution. That’s the name for what happens when man-made lights outshine the stars.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1082094439/ref=smi_www_rco2_go_smi_3905707922?_encoding=UTF8&%2AVersion%2A=1&%2Aentries%2A=0&ie=UTF8&pldnSite=1
Seven Sisters is… I’m not really sure how to explain it. Is it a story about the Pleiades star cluster? Yes and no. Is it about the power of mythology?… Kind of. Is it a metaphor that tells the story of a teenage girl coming to terms with her father‘s death? I honestly don’t know if it’s a metaphor or not. I just sort of… decided to write a story about stars going dark, and this is what I ended up with.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a beautiful story and I love it. I’m just not sure what my intention was with it, and I’m not sure just how much of the story was real and how much was imaginary. I think every reader will get something different from the story, but here is what I personally get from:
It sucks to lose a parent. Both of my parents are still alive, but I’ve still lost them because they aren’t in my life anymore. Not in any real, concrete way like they used to be. So what do you do when the people you have relied on your entire life to protect you… are just gone one day? What do you do? How do you deal with these emotions?
The relationship between a father and daughter in my story is very much based on my own father and I. We were best friends, he loved science and making up stories, and then he just wasn’t part of my life anymore. It was for the best, at the time, but I still went through long periods of missing him and wishing I could ask him for advice when life got complicated.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1082094439/ref=smi_www_rco2_go_smi_3905707922?_encoding=UTF8&%2AVersion%2A=1&%2Aentries%2A=0&ie=UTF8&pldnSite=1
Seven Sisters is… I’m not really sure how to explain it. Is it a story about the Pleiades star cluster? Yes and no. Is it about the power of mythology?… Kind of. Is it a metaphor that tells the story of a teenage girl coming to terms with her father‘s death? I honestly don’t know if it’s a metaphor or not. I just sort of… decided to write a story about stars going dark, and this is what I ended up with.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a beautiful story and I love it. I’m just not sure what my intention was with it, and I’m not sure just how much of the story was real and how much was imaginary. I think every reader will get something different from the story, but here is what I personally get from:
It sucks to lose a parent. Both of my parents are still alive, but I’ve still lost them because they aren’t in my life anymore. Not in any real, concrete way like they used to be. So what do you do when the people you have relied on your entire life to protect you… are just gone one day? What do you do? How do you deal with these emotions?
The relationship between a father and daughter in my story is very much based on my own father and I. We were best friends, he loved science and making up stories, and then he just wasn’t part of my life anymore. It was for the best, at the time, but I still went through long periods of missing him and wishing I could ask him for advice when life got complicated.
Thursday, October 10, 2019
Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Winters cover reveal
I’m excited to get a chance to show off the cover of Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Winters, edited by the amazing Sarena Ulibarri!
My story, Oil and Ivory, is one of 17 stories in this ecologically-minded anthology of science fiction. It features hey hi tech Inuit community trying to save migrating narwhals while also battling an oil spill. My original title while I was writing the first draft was “Ferngully, but with narwhals.“
The book is going to be published on January 7, but pre-order now and save!
Wednesday, October 2, 2019
Names
It’s hard being autistic, especially in the old west. Sensory issues, uninformed attitudes, the fact that you can’t defeat a skin walker without looking in the eyes…
Beck Benally is peculiar. She does not like to make eye contact, she hates to be touched, and she refuses to say anyone’s real name, choosing instead to give them nicknames whether they like it or not. Most of the town wants her to change, but she doesn’t really care… That is, until a mysterious creature kills someone she knows. You see, Beck might just be the only person in town who knows how to defeat a skin-walker...
Unfortunately, the trick is that you have to look them in the eye. And say their real name.
Names is a story about being different and still being awesome, about accepting yourself, and about finding the people who aren’t annoyed by your peculiarities.
Beck is basically me when I was thirteen. Write down to my weird fear of saying names. I loved fantasy fiction and mythology, but the way you defeat most monsters wouldn’t work for me. I thought you had to be physically strong, which I am not because I’m disabled, or you have to look someone in the eye or say their name or any other thousand other things my disability and autism wouldn’t let me do. Were people like me not allowed to save the day?
On the rare occasion that a character would share my peculiarities, they always defeated the monster by overcoming them. But autism isn’t a thing to overcome. Sure, there are a lot of annoying things about autism that get in my way every day, but I can’t have a magical cure and I wouldn’t want one anyway because… It isn’t something to cure. It’s me. So I decided I needed to write about a character who finds a way to work with her autism, not overcome it, to defeat the monster.
I wrote the story before I moved into the group home where I live, so the uncomfortable friendship between Beck and Blue wasn’t based on anyone in particular. In fact, when I wrote it, it felt like pure fiction to me. I did not think anyone could really be OK with all the weird parts of me that everyone else hates. And then I met the people who work at my group home. A few in particular. They don’t always “understand“ why I am the way I am or why I’m acting a certain way, but they accept it and love me anyway.
So I am deciding that Blue is retroactively based on my favorite people here. :)
Names is available in Nothing Without Us, an anthology edited by Cait Gordon and Talia C. Johnson which features disabled characters, neurodivergent characters, spoonie characters, and characters who live with mental illnesses, written by authors who also fall into those categories.
(Cait is also one of our Space Opera Libretti authors! Expect an update about that project soon!)
Read more about the book and find out where you can purchase it here: https://nothingwithoutusanthology.wordpress.com/2019/09/30/nothing-without-us-is-now-available
Beck Benally is peculiar. She does not like to make eye contact, she hates to be touched, and she refuses to say anyone’s real name, choosing instead to give them nicknames whether they like it or not. Most of the town wants her to change, but she doesn’t really care… That is, until a mysterious creature kills someone she knows. You see, Beck might just be the only person in town who knows how to defeat a skin-walker...
Unfortunately, the trick is that you have to look them in the eye. And say their real name.
Names is a story about being different and still being awesome, about accepting yourself, and about finding the people who aren’t annoyed by your peculiarities.
Beck is basically me when I was thirteen. Write down to my weird fear of saying names. I loved fantasy fiction and mythology, but the way you defeat most monsters wouldn’t work for me. I thought you had to be physically strong, which I am not because I’m disabled, or you have to look someone in the eye or say their name or any other thousand other things my disability and autism wouldn’t let me do. Were people like me not allowed to save the day?
On the rare occasion that a character would share my peculiarities, they always defeated the monster by overcoming them. But autism isn’t a thing to overcome. Sure, there are a lot of annoying things about autism that get in my way every day, but I can’t have a magical cure and I wouldn’t want one anyway because… It isn’t something to cure. It’s me. So I decided I needed to write about a character who finds a way to work with her autism, not overcome it, to defeat the monster.
I wrote the story before I moved into the group home where I live, so the uncomfortable friendship between Beck and Blue wasn’t based on anyone in particular. In fact, when I wrote it, it felt like pure fiction to me. I did not think anyone could really be OK with all the weird parts of me that everyone else hates. And then I met the people who work at my group home. A few in particular. They don’t always “understand“ why I am the way I am or why I’m acting a certain way, but they accept it and love me anyway.
So I am deciding that Blue is retroactively based on my favorite people here. :)
Names is available in Nothing Without Us, an anthology edited by Cait Gordon and Talia C. Johnson which features disabled characters, neurodivergent characters, spoonie characters, and characters who live with mental illnesses, written by authors who also fall into those categories.
(Cait is also one of our Space Opera Libretti authors! Expect an update about that project soon!)
Read more about the book and find out where you can purchase it here: https://nothingwithoutusanthology.wordpress.com/2019/09/30/nothing-without-us-is-now-available
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