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2021 Writing and Beyond

I am aware it is already almost March (what is this madness?), so I want to get this 2021 writing wrap-up out there before it becomes even more ridiculous. The good news is, it’s taken me so long to get this posted because I’ve been writing a lot.

2021 was actually a really great writing year for me. I remember back at the end of 2019 or beginning of 2020, riding the metro home after a trivia night with my writing group friends (back when such things were safe), and talking with a friend about feeling stuck in my writing. It wasn’t that I didn’t have projects to work on, but more that we both felt we weren’t progressing in our craft and it was time to move to the next level. And in 2021, I think I finally got to that next level.

Early in 2021, my agent gave me feedback on my middle grade space adventure project. Part of that feedback was, basically, “Your pacing is a bit out of whack. Have you read Save the Cat! Writes a Novel?” And so I read Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, and it changed my writing so much. While none of the advice in the book was entirely new to me, it was presented in such a clear way that really spoke to me, with lots of easy to follow examples. Now, not only do I understand how to structure a novel better than I ever have, but I can actually articulate it to someone else, which honestly feels huge.

I’ve been recommending Save the Cat! Writes a Novel to all my writer friends, and consistent with that, if you’re interested in how stories are structured or want to get a really firm grasp on how to do it yourself, definitely go pick up Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Broddy.

So, armed with my new understanding of story structure, in 2021 I worked through many drafts of my space adventure, including one draft with a sensitivity reader, and yes several drafts where my agent said my characters needed more voice and I failed to understand what she meant, but we got there in the end. This project means so so much to me, and finishing it, for now, was really great!

I also took my better understanding of plot and went back to an older project I’d set aside, did one major revision, and sent it off to new beta readers to get some more feedback. Finally, I started a whole novel, which I’m really excited about, even though I’m flying by the seat of my pants here a bit.

On the short story front, I wrote three or four short stories in 2021, and I think they’re some of my strongest short stories. One of them, “Moon by Moon We Go Together,” was accepted by the first market I submitted it to, the Triangulation: Habitats anthology. I’ve been shopping the other stories around, and I hope to share them with you soon.

I had two other short stories published in 2021, “Harmonies for Cadence” was published in the Voyage YA Journal, and “Noa and the Dragon” was published in the Artificial Divide anthology. And my story “Roomba Requires Your Attention” was accepted by Kaleidotrope and will be published soon. These three stories are all work I wrote a few years ago, but they are still near and dear to my heart.

I also got more involved in the writing community in 2021. I attended WorldCon (virtually because Omicron ruined my in-person plans) and voted for the 2021 Hugos, and I became a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and joined a critique group put on by my local chapter.

Finally, I want to briefly describe my writing goals for 2022. Basically, I want to keep doing what I’ve been doing. I would like to finish the first draft of the new project this year, and I would like to finish revisions on the older middle grade fantasy project I’ve pulled off the shelf. I’ve also started refreshing my research on WWII Italy in the hopes of finally revising my senior honors project from college.

2021 was a great year for leveling up my writing game, and I’m really excited to keep applying everything I’ve learned to my work in 2022. Happy writing, everyone!

Favorite Books of 2021

It’s that time of year again: time to look back on all the books I read in 2021 and try to pick some favorites. Actually, it’s past time, because somehow it’s already February, but what is time now, right?

Last year, I had a goal to read 100 books in 2021. I read 113. And I’ve narrowed it down to 20 favorite books and series and a few honorable mentions. I was actually surprised by the variety of my favorites this year. While there were plenty of series, or installments in series, there were a number of stand-alone books, in all genres, including contemporary and nonfiction. Let’s dive in!

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab. A beautifully lyrical and haunting stand-alone historical fantasy novel about a young French woman who makes a bargain with a demon to live forever so she can see the world, rather than be trapped in the marriage her parents have arranged for her, but at a terrible price. She will live forever, but no one will remember her. The writing in this book was spectacular, and I was very impressed with how this much book covered so much time and space and still tell such a powerful and gripping story. I finished this book right at the beginning of 2021, maybe on New Year’s Day, but it has stayed with me. Definitely recommend.

Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody. My writing improved so much in 2021. Normally I can’t pinpoint a specific timeframe or even a specific piece of advice that helped me, but this year, I can see that my writing improved by leaps, and I can absolutely credit this book, which my agent recommended to me. Save the Cat! Writes a Novel goes through the three-act structure of a novel in fifteen beats, including examples and how much space they should be taking up in the novel. I’ve certainly heard all of this advice before, but this book laid it out so clearly, with a ton of helpful examples, and this made it clear to me in a way it hasn’t been made clear before. I definitely recommend this book for anyone interested in learning how to structure a story.

The Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells. Five novellas and a full-length novel about a security robot who has hacked its controls so it can enjoy soap operas, but the humans its supposed to be protecting keep getting into trouble and it has to deal with them, and then it has to have feelings. It’s a pretty grim world, but the characters are great, and there’s just something warm and fuzzy and so relatable about Murderbot’s desire to just consume media and nope out of everything else that went very well with our first pandemic winter. And then I was so excited when the novel, Network Effect, and the whole series, won Hugos this year! Absolutely love Murderbot!

Upside-Down Magic books 6 and 7 by Sarah Mlynowski, Emily Jenkins, and Lauren Myracle. This series continues to be a lot of fun and very cute. Still waiting for the next book, because book 7 ended on a bit of a cliffhanger.

A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Eutopian Plot to Liberate an American Town and Some Bears by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling. I don’t read a ton of nonfiction, and even when I do, it has to be really special to make it onto my favorites list. But this one was both. It managed to be absolutely hilarious, even as it followed a bunch of libertarians on their quest to create a libertarian utopian town in New Hampshire, not too far from where I grew up actually. The libertarians’ story takes us through the decay of this town and, well, right into some bears. It was a very interesting and informative read, but most importantly I was laughing all the way, which was just what I needed.

Hollowpox: the Hunt for Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend. I probably read this book four times in 2021, so need I say more? Actually, I do, because I need to warn you that this is a plague book, but it was actually kind of cathartic to read. I loved spending more time in Nevermoor with Morrigan and her friends, and oh my gosh that ending!

The House in the Cerulean Sea by T. J. Klune. A cozy fantasy about found family and doing what’s right. Another warm fuzzy read.

Crownchasers by Rebecca Coffindaffer. A high-stakes, action-packed sci fi about a race to find the crown seal to become the next ruler of the space empire—and also to stop the bad guy from winning. Lots of fun. I have the sequel and can’t wait to read it.

Legendborn by Tracy Deonn. The descendants of Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table have a secret society at the University of North Carolina, and a black girl infiltrates them pretending to be a new pledge in order to find out what happened the night her mother died. There’s a lot more too it than that, and it really is a fabulous book at grief and friendship and history and racism, all woven together into a really touching story with a real gut punch of an ending. Can’t wait for the sequel to come out.

The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers. A nice soft conclusion to the Wayfarers series. Are you noticing a theme to my favorite books this year because I am? This wasn’t my favorite of the series, but it was very nice and definitely recommend this book and the whole series.

Amari and the Night Brothers by B. B. Alston. A fun middle grade about a girl, Amari, who follows a secret message left by her missing brother to join a secret government agency that deals with the supernatural, but Amari isn’t just any girl, and she has to use all her smarts and her own new powers to find her brother and foil a dastardly scheme. This was a ton of fun and I am very excited for the next book.

The Mysterious Benedict Society series by Trenton Lee Stewart. A bunch of clever orphans are teamed up to help save the world from an evildoer with a nefarious plan. Reminded me a lot of A Series of Unfortunate Events, except the childrens’ guardians were generally good responsible people. Or as responsible as we get in middle grade. I will say I prefer the first three and didn’t like the fourth nearly as much, and you can certainly stop after the third book, but the fourth was still good fun.

Lady Astronaut series by Mary Robinette Kowal. What if an asteroid struck Earth in 1952, setting off an instinction-level climate crisis and fundamentally altering the space race? Elma York is a former WWII wasp pilot now working as a computer at the new International Aerospace something that starts with C, and she’s trying to convince the higher ups to start training female astronauts. If humanity is going to survive, they have to colonize the moon and Mars, so women will have to be astronauts at some point. I flew through these books and loved them very much. Have I mentioned that alternate history space race fiction is like absolutely my speed? I’ve also been watching For All Mankind on Apple TV and really enjoying it.

Eliza and her Monsters by Francesca Zappia. A really wonderful contemporary YA. A shy girl who doesn’t fit in at high school but secretly writes and illustrates an insanely popular web comic meets a new boy at school who turns out to be one of the top fans of her comic. They become friends and bond over the comic, but Eliza is too scared to tell him she’s the writer, just a fellow fan. But this book goes so much deeper, dealing with mental illness and social isolation and of course the power of friendship. I wasn’t expecting how much I loved this book, but it kept me up reading all night. Definitely worth a read.

Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger. A delightful YA about a Lipan Apache girl who can raise the ghosts of dead animals. She sets out with her ghost dog and her best friend to solve her cousin’s murder. Loved so much about this, including how her parents were onboard and even participated in the adventures, how there was no romantic subplot (Elatsoe is asexual), and of course ghost dog. Read this because it was nominated for a Hugo Award and absolutely adored every minute.

A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher. I didn’t realize until after I read this that T. Kingfisher is also Ursula Vernon, author of Castle Hangnail which I’ve read a couple times and deeply love. A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking follows fourteen-year-old Mona, a wizard whose talents like solely in the realm of the bakery, as she encounters then evades an assassin intent on killing all the wizards in the city. Mona finds herself neck-deep in the thick of a plot to overthrow the government, and she, her new friend Spindle, a murderous sourdough starter named Bob, and her trusty gingerbread man riding on her shoulder, set out stop it. This book was exactly my speed, delightful and heartwarming with a pretty horrifying undercurrent. The pacing got a little weird for me in the middle, but overall I loved it and was absolutely delighted it won the Lodestar Award for best YA novel at the Hugos this year. I also want to add that there was one line in this book, in which a bunch of barbarian soldiers were described as hacking up one of Mona’s creations like blind men trying to slice bread, and when I pointed out to T. Kingfisher on Twitter that this line was pretty offensive, she apologized right away, said I was absolutely right, and promised to do better, which was so much more than I was expecting. The experience only made me love this book and the author more. Also have to give T. Kingfisher a shout-out for her excellent acceptance speech: I never knew so many facts about slime mold.

The Illuminae Files series by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff. A fast-paced, utterly gripping YA sci fi series that had me up to all hours of the night unable to put it down. I can’t even describe it. It’s so great. Go read it.

Wayward Children series books 1-5 by Seanan McGuire. I haven’t finished the series, but so far I’m really enjoying it. It’s a bunch of novellas about the adventures of children who have gone into other worlds and then come back and have to live in this one. They’re fairly dark, but there’s also something truly lovely about them.

The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart. The first book in an epic fantasy trilogy that I’ve fallen in love with. I didn’t finish the second book until early January, but it’s already top of my favorites for 2022. Set in an empire of floating islands that are sinking and magic wielded by the emperor that sucks the life from the empire’s citizens, a group of very different people are trying to make things better. A smuggler is rescuing children from the tithing festivals where their bone shards are taken to fuel the emperor’s magic, all while trying to track his own missing wife, kidnapped by the emperor seven years ago. The daughter of an island governor and her rebel girlfriend are trying to right her father’s wrongs and help the people of her island. And the daughter of the emperor is trying to learn the magic her father has forbidden her, and along the way uncovering some pretty horrendous truths. The characters and world were so rich and the plot so gripping for this one. I can’t wait for the third one to come out in 2023.

And now for some honorable mentions.

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas. This is a pretty popular book, and I did enjoy it a lot. I loved the world, and I loved loved loved the characters. But the pacing and the plot wasn’t quite right for me.

The Extraordinaries series by T. J. Klune. I loved these books. They were a on of fun, if a bit predicatable. I think T. J. Klune got himself into a bit of a corner by having the main character’s father be a cop who previously assaulted someone he was arresting (the first book came out before the big protests of 2020 really brought policing to the forefront). He was obviously trying to do his best to address the policing issues in the second book, but it came off a bit awkward to me, because other than the policing conflict this is set in an alternate U.S. that bears no resemblance to our reality. But this is definitely a fun series, and whether I recommend it on the whole will really depend on how the third book works for me, so I’m more planning to wait and see on this one.

The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson. I love Brandon Sanderson, and was very excited for a magical boarding school with magic based on geometry in an alternate, steampunk America. Unfortunately this book ended on a bit of a cliffhanger, and the main villain remains at large. Also, Brandon Sanderson wrote this a log time ago, like 2013 or 2014, and no sequel has appeared yet. While I loved this book, without a sequel or sequels to finish the story, it was ultimately unsatisfying.

The Scholomance series by Naomi Novik. I just blew through these and really loved them. Two things are keeping me from wholeheartedly recommending them right now. I’ve seen some controversy over some racially insensitive momentsalong with the overall vibe of the first book, and I want to be respectful and not cause additional pain. That being said, I have seen people of color arguing that for the most part, the people saying the first book is racist are taking things out of context, and for the particularly bad moments Naomi Novik has apologized and promised to do better. Moreover, in my opinion (and I’m obviously not a person of color so I don’t feel my opinion has a ton of weight here), the second book really improves in this regard. It feels like Naomi Novik heard the criticism and really listened and really did do better, which is great. My second hesitation is that I just want to see how the third book wraps things up, because it feels like the sort of story where I will either love the ending or loath it.

And that’s it for my favorite books of 2021. My book recs page has been updated to include last year’s favorites, and I’m looking forward to diving into a new year of reading.

I’m doing something a bit different for my reading goal in 2022. I’m only going to track new books I’m reading on Goodreads this year, rather than all the books I read and reread throughout the year. My goal is to read 50 books in 2022 that I have not read before. I will track my rereads in my own personal tracking document. I’m not going to stop myself from rereading my old favorites, because I love to discover new things in my favorite books, never mind that rereading can be incredible stress-relief when the world is being awful again. But I would like to be a bit more intentional about discovering new books too, and I think this structure and this goal will help me accomplish that.

What were your favorite books in 2021? What are your reading goals for 2022?

Happy New Year and happy reading!

Another Short Story Publication Incoming

Hello my friends, and happy December! I know I’ve been a bit absent from this blog for the last few months, despite all my best intentions. I promise there’s a bunch coming down the pipeline in the next couple weeks, as I get all my year end posts ready to go.

In the meantime, I wanted to share that my short story “Roomba Requires Your Attention” is going to be published by Kaleidotrope. This little story, about law students living through the start of the AI apocalypse, was the story that got me out of the longest writer’s block I have ever experienced, back from the end of 2017 through the spring of 2018, so it’s really special to me. It’s also kind of a funny story, which I don’t manage to write that often because funny is hard friends. I can’t wait for you to read it, and I will share more details as soon as I have them.

Artificial Divide Published

Hello friends. We have reached the end of October and I can’t believe it. I still think it’s August, and the warm weather isn’t helping. I’ve been really busy with work and writing and friends in the last couple months, and I just don’t understand where the fall went. I also just realized the Artificial Divide anthology, which includes my story “Noa and the Dragon,” came out a couple weeks ago and I haven’t shared the news.

Artificial Divide is an anthology of stories by blind authors, about blind characters. It isn’t meant to be about blindness, though of course blindness is a big part of it. It’s about blind people having their own stories, with their own agency, told accurately. It’s incredibly important and I’m glad to be part of it. My story, “Noa and the Dragon,” is set in a secondary fantasy world and is about a young girl who goes blind and how she learns to navigate safely and independently and rediscovers the joy and power of reading. This was the first story I wrote about a blind character, and the hope and vulnerability I put into it makes it really special to me.

You can find the Artificial Divide anthology here on Amazon, or wherever you prefer to buy your books. If you’re a fan of audiobooks, I actually got to narrate my story for the audio version of the anthology, which was a really cool experience. To my blind friends, the book does not appear to be up on Bookshare or Bard yet but I know the publisher and editors are working on that. Please go check out the anthology, and I hope you enjoy reading “Noa and the Dragon” as much as I enjoyed writing it.

P.S. I will put up a more detailed story behind the story page for this one ASAP. And I realize I also owe you a story behind the story post for another story I had published this year. Bear with me. It’s coming. I promise.

August Update: Writing, Writing, and More Writing

Yes, I know I said I was going to try and get posts out more frequently, and I know it’s mid-September and I’m just now talking about August, but honestly I’ve spent the last couple weeks trying to figure out what happened to August and what I actually did. It felt like August lasted forever, but at the same time it just slid on by in a haze of hot, stormy weather and a whole lot of writing.

I did get to spend a long weekend at home with my family, which was fun, even if I squeezed all my regular doctor and dentist appointments into that time. Sidenote, flying has become really stressful. I also had some fun hangouts with my writing group where we chatted and actually got writing done. A good friend from college is moving to the D.C. area in the next couple weeks, and I also got to visit with her when she came out to apartment hunt.

Otherwise, I mostly took Neutron for walks when it wasn’t too hot or pouring rain, and I wrote. I finished my latest draft of my book, and I wrote two short short stories and a poem in August, which is just crazy. I also definitely started feeling the urge to start drafting a new book, which makes sense because I’ve pretty much been revising my book-length projects since 2019. So I snuck in an outline for the project I want to work on for National Novel Writing Month this year. I’m so excited for this one I’m not sure I can wait until November to start though.

I mentioned this on the blog a few weeks ago, but just in case you missed it, my short story “Moon by Moon We Go Together” was also published in August in the Triangulation: Habitats anthology. You can get the anthology here, and you can read more about where the story came from right over here.

While I was really productive on the writing side in August, I feel like I’ve fallen into a bit of a reading slump. It’s been worse this month than it was in August, but I’ve been having a hard time picking up new books and getting into them, even if it’s something I’m really excited to read. Once I’m into the book, I’m fine, but then when I finish it will be a few days before I pick up something new, which isn’t how I’ve been reading for the last couple years. It might be because I’ve been listening to so much of the Writing Excuses podcast, because all those episodes are so short and digestible and I’m learning so much. It’s easy to say, “I’ll just listen to one more.” But I also think I’m just generally tired, and while I’ve read some books I’ve really enjoyed, most of what I’ve read in the last few months has only been okay. I’ve read so much in the last couple years, and I feel like I’m getting picky.

I only read five books in August. A couple, like Sourdough and Honey Girl, were really fun but didn’t quite come together for me for various reasons. I really enjoyed Zero G by Dan Wells, though it felt like the author was a bit didactic on the science of how gravity works on a spaceship, even for a middle grade book. I was also a huge fan of the third Mysterious Benedict Society book, The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner’s Dilemma. I love these children and all their crazy adventures! My one complaint on that is that it sort of feels like the kids have less and less agency with each book, but that’s a very minor complaint for me because I love all this so much. (Relatedly, I did finally finish the Mysterious Benedict Society show and it was great! Would definitely recommend.

My absolute favorite book of August, though, was The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal. This is the first book in her Lady Astronaut series. The third book is nominated for a Hugo, as is the whole series, so I decided I better read them all. And between this and my love for For All Mankind, the show on Apple TV, I’ve realized I’m definitely a fan of alternate history/science fiction about the space race. The Calculating Stars is about a woman trying to open the astronaut program to women after a meteor strikes Earth in 1952. The impact will cause massive climate change, necessitating outer space colonies. And it is amazing! You should all go read it now!

And that’s it for August. Let me know what you’ve been up to, and if you’ve read any of the books I mention here, I’d love to discuss them.

How to Write a Blind Character, 2021 Edition

I’m going to the World Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention in December, so I’m trying to read all of the books on the Hugo ballot. So about a month ago, I read Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse. I did not like it for a number of reasons, but mostly because the way the blind character was portrayed, and really the way the entire premise of the book treats the blind character, was incredibly offensive to me. To be clear, I have seen other blind people on Twitter praising this book to the heavens, so obviously opinions vary, but I disagree with them. A lot. I’m a pretty forgiving reader but this book made me want to scream and throw things. I did in fact put together a very long Twitter thread, because I felt like no one was talking about these issues with the book and they needed to be discussed. If you want to read that, it’s right over here, but that isn’t what I want to talk about in this post. Today, I want to be a bit more constructive and provide some tips on how to write a blind character.

If you’re new to my site or somehow missed it, I’m blind. I was born with Aniridia Glaucoma, which means I don’t have any irises and my eye pressure isn’t normal. I used to have some vision in my right eye, but I had to have it removed almost eight years ago, so now I have no vision in my right eye. I often describe what I see on my right as a big black hole. I do still have some vision in my left eye. I can see light and dark and colors, but I can’t see details unless I’m very close. Often if I see something, I won’t be positive what I’m looking at until I’ve touched it, unless I already know what I’m looking at. I can read print, but generally it has to be really big, and I have to be really close, and even then I’m going letter by letter. Because I don’t have irises, my eyes can’t adjust, so I have a harder time seeing in particularly bright or particularly dark settings.

All of this is relevant, because the first thing you need to know about writing a blind character is that most people who identify as blind do have some vision. Any amount of vision is useful. For example I can read the time on my alarm clock or see the temperature setting on my oven. But how blind people use their vision will vary from person to person and situation to situation. And while any amount of vision is a useful tool we might use, it probably isn’t the first tool we draw on. It’s also important to explain that any amount of vision is vast to a blind person: there is a huge difference between being totally blind and having light perception, just as there is a huge difference between having light perception and having light perception and being able to see colors. So my first piece of advice is to do your research. There is tons of literature out there on blindness, particularly from blind people’s points of view. Read it. And don’t be afraid to seek out blind people and ask questions. If you’re polite and sincere in your goal to do this right, most of us are willing to talk to you.

Do your research not only on how much blind people can see but also on the tools and skills blind people use to be independent. We travel with white canes and guide dogs to get around, and we have years of training to learn to travel safely. Our canes and guide dogs are not props to be abandoned for the sake of the plot or the action sequence (looking at you, Daredevil). They are essential for our independence. Similarly, we use assistive technology, read Braille or large print, put tactile markers on our appliances, have systems for organizing and labeling our food and matching our clothing, and so on. In the past when I’ve had roommates, I’ve had a hard and fast rule that my roommates could absolutely not move my belongings, because otherwise I could never find them again (I have a whole story about searching for my apple slicer for two weeks because someone moved it without telling me). The same goes for moving furniture, especially in familiar environments when I might not be working with my guide dog. I’m describing all these things because so often, when I see blind characters, I don’t see this level of detail on not only how they use skills to adapt to their surroundings but also how they adapt their surroundings to help them.

A big thing I see a lot when people write blind characters is a blind character who has either some kind of magic or superpower or some really advanced technology that effectively negates their blindness. This is bad, because it isn’t true disability representation. Yes, blind people go out and do both ordinary and awesome things on a daily basis in real life, but we don’t do it in spite of our blindness. We do it with our blindness. We have skills and tools and technology that help, but we are still being blind. Our blindness has shaped who we are and how we relate to the world. If you have a blind character with a superpower or advanced technology that negates their blindness, then they aren’t blind.

I’m not saying you can’t write a blind character with cool technology or magic. You definitely can, and I argue you should. If sighted characters get magic, give it to the blind characters too. But you don’t want that magic to negate their disability. One way to do this is to use the details I was discussing above, the blindness skills and tools all blind people use in our daily lives. Another option is to place your blind character in situations where their magic or technology can’t help. Toph from Avatar the Last Airbender is an excellent example of this. You can also impose limitations on the technology or magic, which arguably you should be doing anyway just for good writing, so it’s clear to the reader just how the character is using it. For example, I’m working on a project with a blind character, and she has these wristbands that help her navigate and read print, but they don’t work if she’s going too fast, and she runs into trouble. Alternatively, you can give your character a power that isn’t helpful at all in terms of seeing things. Maybe they have magic that is specifically used in cooking, for example. They can’t use that to navigate the world.

So often, I see blind characters who are just stellar at being blind. Don’t do this. No matter how skilled a blind person is, there are still times when they struggle. Heck, I walk into walls in my own apartment if I’m not paying attention. I also want to note that everyone’s feelings on their vision are different, and they may also vary.

Blind people use words like “see,” “Look,” and “watch.” We enjoy movies and TV shows and sports. At least I’m told blind people enjoy sports. I never personally got that one, but that’s because i don’t like sports, not because I’m blind. Also, a lot of blind people prefer the word ‘blind” to other terms like “visually impaired,” “visually challenged,” or “a person who is blind.” But this will vary person to person. A blind woman once vehemently attempted to convince my younger brother that I should call myself “sightless.” Honestly, that baffles me and I don’t like that as a term, but that’s what she preferred.

Do not have your blind character touch other people’s faces to understand what they look like. First of all, no one does that in real life. It’s super weird and awkward. It also doesn’t actually give the blind person any useful information. They’re not going to think of someone they met as the person whose face felt like XYZ, even if they do the weird face feeling thing. They’re going to remember the sound of their voice.

The big takeaway here is blind people are people too. Your blind characters should also be people, as fully realized as any of your other characters. Their blindness is a crucial part of their identity, but it also isn’t the only part of their identity. Blind people have jobs and hobbies and interests. They date and fall in love and marry and break up. They have pets who aren’t guide dogs. They have kids. They have lives. I would love to see more stories of blind characters that don’t focus on their blindness but are instead about them living their lives and going on adventures and having agency with their blindness.s

A quick note on blocking: if you’re writing from the point of view of a blind character, be very careful, and pay close attention to how you write your descriptions. It’s hard, which isn’t to discourage you from trying it, but as writers we usually write descriptions with sight as the primary sense, and obviously you can’t do that with a character who’s blind. You have to use all your other senses and still make it clear to the reader what’s going on. I learned to write from reading, so I too use a lot of visual descriptions, so I’ve struggled with this too, and I’m blind.

Finally, pay attention to the role you are giving your blind character. As with any kind of representation, make sure they are not filling that role because they are blind. This is particularly important if you plan to write a villain who is blind. Blind people can absolutely do terrible things, but that isn’t because they’re blind. That’s because they’re people, and people can do terrible things. But be extremely careful not to imply that your blind villain is a villain because they are blind or that blindness is inherently evil. I shouldn’t need to say this, but apparently I do (see my Black Sun Twitter thread for details). Similarly, pay close attention to the message you are sending about blindness in your book. Individual people’s feelings may vary, but blindness is not something to be feared, it does not make a person helpless or evil, it does not give a person superhearing or any other enhanced senses, or any of the other stereotypes and misconceptions that are rampant in popular media.

I do not want to discourage anyone from writing a blind character. I do not subscribe to the belief that writers should only write within their experiences, because I believe writing outside our experiences is how we learn. But that is only true if you’re willing to put in the work to do it well and not cause harm with your story, which you can do so easily if you aren’t careful, even if you have the best intentions. Please, write blind characters. We need more stories about blind people. But please, please, please do your research. Hire sensitivity readers who are blind to review your project, pay them for their time, and listen to their advice. And please pay attention to what you are ultimately saying about blindness in your work. Remember that both writing and reading are ultimately acts of empathy, and how you portray blind people on the page will impact how people see blind people out in the real world. That’s a lot of power to have, so use it for good.

Short Story News

I have a bunch of great news for you all this week.

First, the anthology Triangulation: Habitats was published this week. It includes my story “Moon by Moon We Go Together,” about how building sustainable space colonies can go wrong, the evolution of meaning in music, and general space is neat vibes. You can grab a copy of the anthology here. It’s available in paperback and Kindle additions. And once you’ve read the story, you can head over here to read about where I got the idea and how I wrote it. Writing this story was really an adventure for me, and I really hope you enjoy reading it.

The other news is that you can now preorder the Artificial Divide anthology, which will be published next month and contains my fantasy story “Noa and the Dragon.” Artificial Divide is an anthology of stories by blind writers about blind characters. I can’t wait for you all to read it. You can preorder it in a number of formats. Preorder a paperback copy here, or an ebook or audiobook copy here. Fun fact, I actually narrated my own story for the audiobook, which was a lot of fun.

Reading, Writing, and Swimming in July

In my last blog post, I mentioned that I wanted to try something new, more of a general life update than just a roundup of all the books I read that month. The monthly reading roundup posts were starting to feel tedious to me, and I was struggling to have energy to post other things. My hope is these posts will be more fun for me, and you, going forward and that they will give me more energy to write other things for this blog. So let’s give it a shot!

July was a pretty good month. Yes it was a million degrees in D.C. all the time, but I was able to wait to take walks with Neutron at least until the sun went down. It wasn’t much cooler then, but at least we weren’t being baked alive. I did a lot of outdoor barre classes, which was fun, and at the end of the month, the studio opened up for indoor classes, mask optional if you’re vaccinated (and they check, which makes me very happy). I also finished rewatching all of the Tangled series in Italian, and I’ve so far really been enjoying the adaptation for The Mysterious Benedict Society.

In mid-July, my friends and I went up to New Jersey for a long weekend. It was meant to be a writing retreat, and some of us got writing done, but mostly it was hours of playing a travesty of volleyball, with a beach ball, in the pool. We christened our game “sport,” because we writerly types are so creative. It was a great weekend all around. I don’t think I’ve laughed so much in a really long time, and I went back to D.C. feeling much less stressed about the state of the world.

In other good news, one of my friends at this retreat had a cold (she tested negative for Covid, otherwise she wouldn’t have come), and I did not get sick. This was the first time I can definitively say I was exposed to germs since I found out I had lime disease at the start of the pandemic. Staying at home for a year and a half and wearing a mask whenever I go out has meant I haven’t been sick in all that time, which has been wonderful and such a welcome change from the constant illness I was dealing with all through my last year of law school, studying for the bar, and my first few months in D.C., but I had no idea if my lime had become chronic or if the antibiotics had worked. So this weekend I was away with my friends, I knew for sure I had been exposed to a cold, and I did not get sick. I am absolutely delighted, because I’m pretty sure this means the antibiotics worked and I don’t have chronic lime. I feel really lucky and so relieved.

I read fourteen books in July, bringing my total for the year up to 84 books. I finished the Princess Diaries series and for the most part really enjoyed the ending (though I wish we got to actually see the royal wedding). I also finished the Greystone Secrets trilogy by Margaret Peterson Haddix. I read the first two books last year and loved them, and I reread them this month before reading the third book. The third book, The Messengers, was a lot of fun, but honestly things got weird and it didn’t feel like it pulled the mysteries together for me. This month, I also discovered the Extraordinaries series by T. J. Klune and Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff. The Extraordinaries was a lot of fun, I absolutely adore the voice and the characters, and I can’t wait to find out what happens in the third book. But a major caveat for me is I’m really not sure how the subplot with Nick’s father, who is a cop, and the issue of police brutality, is handled in these books. It felt forced and shallow to me, and this made me uncomfortable. I’m hoping it comes to something in the third book. Illuminae was cool because it started out as a typical YA romance type thing, except in space, and then about a third of the way through you realize that is not what this book is at all, and it was great. But then at about the two thirds mark, the book did something that made me think there were only two possible endings, and I didn’t like either of them, so I stopped caring. The ending is something totally different and it’s really cool and I can’t wait for the sequel, but that last bit where I didn’t care really put a damper on how I feel about the book.

My favorite book of July was Amari and the Night Brothers by B. B. Alston. This book was absolutely amazing! It’s a middle grade book about a young black girl, Amari, who joins the bureau of supernatural affairs to try to find her missing older brother. She confronts bullies, entrance trials, and evil magicians and she is awesome! She also has an illegal talent making her life a whole lot harder. This book is heartwarming and beautiful and so so powerful, and I cannot wait for the sequel! In the meantime, you should all go read it right now!

Unfortunately, I had a least favorite book of July as well, Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse. I read this because it was on the Hugo ballot, and I did not like it at all. I normally try to find something good in every book I read, even if it turns out that it wasn’t the right story for me, but I just couldn’t here. Not only were there so many problems with the writing and the story, but I found the ablest tropes it employed to be incredibly harmful and just all around gross. I have so much more to say on this book, and it has inspired me to work on another post on how to write blind characters without perpetuating harmful stereotypes, which I will hopefully have ready for you all next week, so stay tuned.

In happier news, I discovered Brandon Sanderson’s 2020 writing lectures at BYU on YouTube and binged them all in a week. A lot of the lessons were things I already knew because I’ve been writing a long time myself, but I definitely picked up some useful nuggets and new ways of looking at things that I think will improve my writing. I have since been listening to all of the archives of the Writing Excuses podcast too and really enjoying it. I’m very late to the party on this podcast, obviously, but in case you’re like me and haven’t listened to Writing Excuses before, I recommend it. Each episode is only fifteen minutes long, so it’s very digestible and I’ve learned a lot.

I’ve also been super productive with my writing this month. I finished a draft of my fantasy mystery project, the memory wiping Academy novel I’ve mentioned on here before. My writing group has been reading the final chapter this week and they’re giving me feedback tomorrow. The book needs a lot of work still, but I think this draft is definitely the closest I’ve been to the story I’m trying to tell.

I’ve also been hard at work on some final revisions to the middle grade space adventure novel. I’ve been trying to add more emotion and voice for each of my point of view characters. At first it was kind of a counterintuitive revision for me, because I tend to take “show don’t tell” to an extreme when it comes to character reactions and feelings, but this isn’t the best approach for middle grade, and once I got into it and adjusted my mindset, it’s actually been a really fun revision.

Finally, four years ago when I was at Seeing Eye, I had a free course on writing flash fiction, and I got about halfway through it before training with Neutron became too consuming for me to consider. I had the beginnings of seven connected flash fiction pieces set in my Phoenix Song universe, and I had middles for most of them, but I never finished, and whenever I’ve sat down to work on the project over the years something hasn’t felt right about it. This month, I had the idea to put the flash pieces together into one short story, and it worked beautifully, though my ending may still need some work. It made me really happy to finish this story and have another Phoenix story completed. Hopefully I’ll be able to share it with you soon.

When I write it all out like that, July was quite a month! I hope you’ve all been keeping safe and having fun. What have you all been up to this summer?

June Reading Roundup

Happy July everyone. Summer has really hit, and we’re steaming away here in D.C. I was still really worried about what was going on with Neutron for the first half of the month, but then Seeing Eye came to work with me and we decided that at least right now we’re totally safe, which was a huge relief. Otherwise, it was a pretty chill month, except for the temperature of course. My writing group had a few in person gatherings, but we’re still doing our regular meetings remotely for the time being because the metro has some summer construction we’re trying to avoid.

In addition to reading, I finally finished watching the Tangled TV show on Disney Plus, and I just want to give it a shout-out because it’s adorable. Tangled is probably my favorite Disney movie, and the show was a great sequel. Also the music is very catchy. I also discovered in June that I can watch so many things on Disney Plus in Italian, and since I’ve been feeling like my Italian is rusty, I started rewatching the Tangled show in Italian. It was hard at first but ultimately really fun. Half my thoughts are in Italian now, which is just the way I like it.

Collage of the seven books I read in June: A Little Princess, The Bone Shard Daughter, The Mysterious Benedict Society, The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey, Princess Mia, Throne of Jade, and The City We BecameI read seven books in June, the same I read in May. It was almost all sci fi and fantasy books and then one classic. The classic was a standalone, I continued two series I’m in the middle of, started two other series, and one of the books I’m not sure if it’s meant to stand alone or be the start of the series. My writing group is going to Worldcon this year, since it’s in D.C., so I also started working my way through the books that have been nominated for Hugo Awards. I’ve already read some of them—Raybearer, Legendborn, and the Murderbot series at least. Harrow the Ninth is nominated for a Hugo, and since I haven’t read the first book in the series, Gideon the Ninth, I decided I should read that first. Honestly, I couldn’t get through it. I got about a third of the way through and still had no idea what was going on, and I ended up putting it down. As you know, I don’t put books down lightly. I think I can name all the books I’ve put down ever. There might only be three. A lot of my writing group is really insisting that I give Gideon another try, and maybe I will, but we’ll see.

I also want to throw it out there that I reread all the Nevermoor books again (this might be the fourth time this year), but this time I read them in Braille. It was a really interesting experience to see things like punctuation and spelling sentence structure that I didn’t necessarily notice when listening to the audiobooks. I am also super excited that we now appear to have a title and a synopsis for the fourth book, even though it won’t be coming out until the end of 2022. I realize I have gotten myself stuck in a loop of Nevermoor, but there are far worse loops to get stuck in, and it makes me happy, so I don’t care.

But now let’s chat about the new books that I finished in June.

First, I read A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. This is set in England in the early 1900s, I think. Sarah is sent to boarding school, and when her beloved father dies leaving her nothing, the headmistress of the boarding school makes her become a servant and live in the attic and everything is awful. Frances Hodgson Burnett also wrote The Secret Garden, which I didn’t realize until after I finished this book, but there were several times throughout this book when I kept thinking “this reminds me of The Secret Garden.” In general, I enjoyed this book, hisoough it had that slower, very descriptive quality of older books that I’m not overly fond of. It also had an omniscient narration that told us some things that undercut the tension of the ending. But this was a nice little book, and if you haven’t read it, you might enjoy it.

Next, I read The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart. This is the first book in the Drowning Empire series, and I think the next book is coming out later this year. The Bone Shard Daughter follows a whole bunch of characters living on this empire of floating islands. We have the emperor’s daughter who has lost most of her memories due to an illness and is trying to learn her father’s magic. There is the thief who is searching for his wife who was kidnapped years ago and is now getting roped into saving children from the yearly festivals that give magic to the emperor. There’s the daughter of the governor of one island whose girlfriend is involved in the rebellion. And there are people trapped in a mental fog working on a mysterious island. There is also a very creepy magic system that we discover over the course of the book. My one and only complaint, and it’s a very minor complaint, is that I felt like the emperor’s daughter was supposed to be the main character, especially because of the title, and she was actually the only character I had a hard time being engaged with for a while. But her story did hook me, and once it did, and everything started coming together, it was so great. I particularly loved how all these pieces and layers came together and this book just built and built and built to this great climax and finale. I can’t wait for the sequel.

Next, I read the first two books in Trenton Lee Stewart’s The Mysterious Benedict Society series: The Mysterious Benedict Society and The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey. The first book is about a group of unusual and talented children who are recruited to infiltrate a boarding school and foil the headmaster’s evil plan. And the second book sees the kids off on new and exciting adventures. These books were a ton of fun. I really enjoyed them, and I’m looking forward to getting the next one out of the library. I’m also currently watching the show that’s coming out on Disney and that’s been a lot of fun.

After that, I read the ninth Princess Diaries book, Princess Mia by Meg Cabot. I believe last month I complained that Mia hadn’t grown as a character much throughout the series so far, and that she was an absolute idiot in the last book. But this book saw Mia really having to deal with the consequences of her actions grow as a character and make some complicated decisions and I love it. It was certainly darker and more serious than the earlier books in the series, but at this point that’s what I needed.

Next, I read Throne of Jade by Naomi Novik, the second book in the Temeraire series. The Chinese want Temeraire back, because they believe only the emperial line can have celestial dragons. Temeraire refuses to be parted from Lawrence, so together they travel to China and political games begin to try and keep Temeraire with Lawrence (the British side) and to keep him in China (the Chinese side). It’s more complicated than that but there you go. I didn’t enjoy this quite as much as the first book. The pacing just felt very weird to me. Most of it was very slow, and then the last third or so was a roller coaster of action and political moves and countermoves and it really finished with a bang. That being said, I did enjoy it a lot, particularly the development of the bond between Lawrence and Temeraire, and I’m looking forward to getting my hands on the third book.

As I mentioned above, I’ve started working my way through the books nominated for Hugo awards this year. In June, I read The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin. This was actually my first ever Jemisin book, and I will definitely be checking out more of her work. Recommendations welcome. The City We Became is about how at a certain point cities become actually alive, are born into sentient, human being-type avatars of themselves, but the birth of New York goes wrong, and a bunch of very different people become the avatars for each of the burrows of New York and have to find each other and fight off the evil force that is trying to prevent the birth of New York. If the birth of New York fails, well pretty much New York is gone and a whole lot of stuff around it. What I really liked about this book was how it took a really weird concept and made it really accessible. I also loved the variety of characters we were dealing with. I was not totally thrilled about the ending. This is the book that I’m unclear if it’s meant to have a sequel or not. It’s one of those endings that if there’s more to come, I am totally fine with it. If this is it, it just wasn’t completely satisfying to me.

And that’s it for June. I’ve realized over the past few weeks that unfortunately I’m not enjoying writing these posts as much as I used to. I love talking about books, but these monthly posts about everything I’ve read are starting to feel kind of tedious for me. So starting next month, I’m going to try something a little different. Instead of talking about everything I’ve read each month, I’m going to give you more of a general update on what I’ve been up to with life and writing and then talk briefly about my absolute favorite books of the month. I’m hoping this will make the posts more exciting for me to write and give me some more energy and time to maybe put some other posts up here more frequently. So stay tuned for that. In the meantime, I hope you’re enjoying your summers and staying safe.

Moon by Moon We Go Together to Be Published in Triangulation: Habitats

Hello friends! I am so excited to share with you that my short story “Moon by Moon We Go Together” is going to be published in the anthology Triangulation: Habitats. Triangulation is an annual anthology published by Parsec Inc. For the past three years, the themes have been environmental. Triangulation: Habitats explores sustainable living, and my story is about the consequences of colonizing the solar system. I am so happy “Moon by Moon” has found a home in Triangulation: Habitats (pun intended), and I can’t wait to share it with you. The anthology will be published in August. You can learn more and help support the anthology here.