#dang and now I’m thinking about other nonfiction I’ve read for my paper

[bookish-bee]

Thank you @figuringthengsout for tagging me <3333

rules: list ten books that have stayed with you in some way. don’t take but a few minutes, and don’t think too hard - they don’t have to be the “right” or “great” works, just the ones that have touched you

Soo tired it’s very late so I’ll be brief. In order I read them, not in order of importance to me

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - every mother and her daughter should read. My first profound read.

Crime and Punishment - the triumph of my fourteenth year. The Quest for the Perfect Translation pt.1 (it’s Nicolas Slater’s version. You’re welcome)

Ordinary People - found a similar person in Conrad. And cried. A lot.

The Plague - hahaha covid. Incredible. Began my love of Camus and then I got into philosophy and then died a little bit

All Quiet on the Western Front - the most influential a book has been on my life. Started the WWI interest and got me into the trench poets and started my research paper and so much more

The metamorphosis - learned so much about disability and what my family is. Read it so many times.

Inferno - got me through a rough spot. The Quest for the Perfect Translation pt.2 (I SWEAR BY Dorothy L Sayers. She’s incredible)

Patrick Modiano Missing Person - I can’t even talk about this one except to say that it changed me and that I want to write like him

Eichmann in Jerusalem - began my love of nonfiction and journalism and my obsession with the guardian and the Atlantic and the New Yorker, etc and now I spend so much money on newspapers and magazines I blame Arendt and her terrific reporting.

I didn’t include any poetry plays or short fiction because that would be cheating. Would require a whole other list for those.

And, note, these are the books that impacted me profoundly. Not exactly pleasureful books I got into, how it works for me in fandom. That would, again, be another list. (Aftg, sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie)

[ziggyschutz]

So, 2017 was… a year.

It’s not quite over, but I thought I’d do a roundup of my year from a writing sense, as well as mention the stuff I’ve already got lined up for 2018.

Eggshells was published in Behind The Mask, by Meerkat Press. This made me officially a published author, which is pretty dang cool. The story stars Pen, who is an invulnerable superhero who gets a concussion, and it follows her for a year as she learns what recovery can look like. 

Pen (and her brother Davie) will show up again in a novel tentatively titled Mightier Than, which is an idea of a first draft right now.

With help from some amazing people, we launched Crossing Wires, a post-apocalyptic audio drama that tells the stories of survivors that don’t usually get to survive the end of the world, in this often very white/straight/able bodied genre. We currently have three episodes, available on iTunes and Google Play and wherever you listen to podcasts!

I spoke on my first panel as a writer at Rose City Comicon, in Portland, talking about fanfiction and how it’s changing the publishing industry. I also made some amazing friends there (thanks Taylor for inviting me to that panel in the first place).

I then attended Read With Pride Northwest in Seattle, and the Write With Pride event the day before. This marked my first time doing a reading in public (!!!), I was on another panel (this one about writing queer stories that are specfic as well), and was also just an amazing experience in general. Getting to chat with authors for two full days was fantastic, and it was also incredibly validating. I’m a fan, I’ll be back next year for sure.

And then I went to Podcon, where I wasn’t a guest or anything but I did talk about Crossing Wires and I learned a lot about podcasts and also just fell in love with the audio drama community and how welcoming and excited for each other they are.

My piece It Befits Her, a short story about a knight and her squire donning armour in a church at the end of the world, appears in the zine about ladies, lady-aligned folk, and swords called Forged, which is on preorder until December 31, and is gonna finish up 2017 for me. Not a bad way to go out.

Now, for 2018 - 

Dogear’d, my nonfiction podcast where I talk to people about lines and passages from books that changed their lives, will be launching in probably late January. If you have a line or scene from a book you’d want to talk about with me for five or so minutes, you should definitely reach out and let me know!

Not quite my writing, but I am also directing and editing The Posterchildren Audiobook, which will be a full-cast audiobook of @quipquipquip‘s amazing book, The Posterchildren: Origins. If you like queer superheroes, you should absolutely check this book out, and the audiobook too, when it is released, chapter by chapter, in early 2018.

I am also going to be a mentor at a local youth writing retreat in Victoria in February! Which is so exciting.

By Candlelight, a short story following a girl and her own ghost waiting for her funeral, will appear in Into The Mystic, Volume 3, by Ninestar Press. It’s a collection of paranormal sapphic stories, and should be coming out sometime in March.

Also in March is Emerald City Comicon, which I will be at. I am in Say It On The Page, a panel about representation in writing. Last year, I went to panels at ECCC and made it my goal to be in a panel at ECCC 2018, and it actually happened! Pretty excited about that.

And also in March I will be flying to Tennessee to attend Writing Cross-Culturally, a three-day, four-night writing workshop, which I had to apply to get into and I did and I’m beyond excited for this, it’s going to be… just incredible.

My pitch for a short thriller featuring a hydrophobic girl and a reckless journalist and a series of strange drownings was picked for Malaise, a collection of horror stories written by marginalized authors that is being put out by @jessaminepress. The kickstarter for that should be going up in early summer.

And of course, we will be finishing Crossing Wires’s first season, and beginning the second season! 

I’m done with 2017, honestly. It wasn’t a bad year for me on paper (or at least my writing, although I think I did do better mentally and physically in terms of health compared to 2016, which ISN’T HARD TO DO as 2016 was not good for me at all), but it was a rough year, it was a year that weighs on the soul. Everything that was happening made putting myself out there, made being creative and hopeful, so much harder.

Bring on 2018, is what I say. Bring it on, and we can all do our best to make it better.