We. Are. Superheroes. OR, How I Channel My Rage

I'm self-publishing Tempest Makers this year. I have a date in my head, but it's not set in stone until I can officially sort out the cover design, formatting, marketing, and finish with final editing.

But the point is I will self-publish a story by the end of the year.

When I realized I'd publish soon, the first emotion I felt was joy, followed by nausea, then relief (not relief from throwing up, because I didn't). The sense of knowing I'm so close to transferring my energy from this story to the next is invigorating.

It's said when you publish the first story, the rest fall out of your head and onto paper.

Yeah. I get that now.

DUH, I'm a little nervous, but I'm happy/surprised I'm taking this all so well. I'm pretty sure it's because I have a great source of writers who've successfully self-published and are happy to help me.

My choice to self-publish came after a lot of thought, but the reason most important to me was that I wanted to see if I could do it. I dated a guy several years ago, and he said he thought I was brilliant because instead of not knowing the answer to a question and going on with life not finding out the answer, I look for the answer. I was flattered because, 1, this guy was not one to freely give out ego boosters like that, and 2, I care about the Answer, whatever it is. I'm curious about it. I'd like to know________. When I know, I'll either look more into it, or tuck it away in the Random Crap File and maybe bring it up at a party, Gathering, or interview (Not as unprofessional as you may think.).

I guess I don't see a reason in slowing down my momentum or deciding now is a good time to put on rose-tinted glasses.

I understand being tired, and falling out of love with your writing, and getting into fights with it, and having an ugly cry because it hates you because you've read and/or edited the same line that feels like a zillion times, and you 2 take a break to "see other people," to come back and fall in love all over again.

If I do decide to publish with a House, I'll know what I'm doing. I'll understand the "guts" of promotion and working with others as a writer with an editor's perspective and if there is an issue with or question about promotions, formatting, cover design, etc., I'll be able to verbalize my needs in an intelligent way.

Is what I'm doing nuts? …Relative to what?

Is what I'm doing easy? Things are easier when you're prepared to be flexible. We didn't go to the moon because it was easy, and look at how much we know now. Look at how much is possible.

One of the most important reasons to publish at all was brought on by the catalyst of rage. Pure, bright, white, molten hot light of Rage. I'm not going to go into the origin story for the Rage. I'm focusing on what I did with it. To be fair and honest, I'm human (shocked, I know), and it took about 2 days to process the situation to where I was able to focus, but I knew in the early stages of the rage I needed—it was imperative—that I channel it in a positive way. My awareness was raised enough to know, the rage wasn't going to go away and I needed to do something with it. I reasoned with myself. I told myself, if I physically act on this rage, I'll end up arrested or dead. I had stories to publish, so getting arrested or dying would mess that up all to hell. Eventually, I calmed down, tweaked a scene, and it was a defining moment that added the right amount of conflict to Tempest Makers. The story went from "bubblegum" to "Yes. Yes, I just went there," especially compared to the next 2 stories where, now that I think about it, I'm going to have to make sure lighter scenes are added because of what has to be in those stories to allow for flow.

One foot in front of the other.

Like Somebody dumped Canterbury Tales all over a Modern Map, Part 1, Or, One Mother of an Opening Line

"I lost an arm on my last trip home."

Now that is how to start a story. I can't think of any other sentence that has such impact and meaning, and not be completely understood until The End.

So many questions.

It took a while to read Octavia Butler's Kindred, but I'm glad I did. Many parts of the story were hard to read. I found myself putting down the book, doing something, anything, else, before picking up the book again.

The story has so many layers of conflict, I don't know where to begin. I love the element of surprise, so I tend to be a stickler about spoilers. I'm trying to figure out how to talk about the novel's impact without giving anything away.

You know what's going to happen, but you don't really know.

It's taken me a while to attempt to "verbalize" how important this story is, and how it, in many ways, still resonates now as vibrantly as it did when it was first published.

Okay, I think what really stuck out for me were the relationships among the characters. It was like looking at a panoramic snap shot of ignorance-driven envy and it not being inauthentic. And not inauthentic from a historical point of view, as in, I wasn't there, how would I know, but not being inauthentic from the point of view of people treating each other like crap. It’s a matter of have and have-not. You-have-something-I-want-You-have-something-better-You-are-treated-better.

'Know anyone like this?

I think great stories are universal. The Universality is either very deep at the core or hovers just at the surface. I'm sure someone's already mentioned this. Great stories are the discussions that last long into the night, where there are agreements and agreements to disagree. Great stories are the maps that change from the medieval print of mythical beasts and personified clouds blowing winds toward exotic lands, to the time of Amerigo Vespucci, to any and all versions of Yugoslavia over that last 100 years. The same world. Different views.

I'm sure I'll touch on or around this topic again. But for now, this will have to do.

The History of a Story: Octavia

Disclaimer: In writing this blog, I realize the cost of embracing fear on many, many levels.

I remember the day I first heard about Octavia Butler. Unfortunately it was the day NPR announced she had crossed. I can't recall the interview. It's been 8 years. She crossed 4months after my grandmother crossed, and 3 months after I was laid off from my job, a day after starting graduate school. I lived in my bathrobe for much of that winter. My brain hurt.

It took a while for my brain to process Octavia was a black, female, science-fiction writer. I'm trying to remember which emotion I felt first. Surprised that black people wrote science fiction. Happy that black people wrote science fiction. Really, really, really damn sad I wouldn't be able to meet her in this existence.

My husband and I listened to an audiobook of Kindred and it was an indescribable feeling of what awe and liberation feels like (I know that sounds weird given what Kindred is about), what opening a door that just appeared and finding every joy that ever existed feels like. I felt the twinge of possibility and it has taken 7 years to build enough momentum to bring my stories to light. But do you want to know something very odd? I didn't get a chance to finish listening to Kindred. The audiobook was a book on cassette I checked out from the library. The cassette was very old and I had to turn up the volume to be able to hear the narrator. My husband and I gave up on the tape and made a promise we would find her books and read them. I have 6 of her books sitting on my shelf, waiting to be read.

At first I felt like an ass because I haven't opened a single book, but I don’t think I was ready to read her stories until now. Over the last year or so, in my search for writers of color, I found NK Jemisin, rediscovered Nalo Hopkinson (I had Brown Girl in the Ring for a stupid long time before reading it), Saladin Ahmed, and so many more.

I was never alone. *squishy feeling on the inside.*

In knowing Octavia existed, the block of "you can't write science fiction because you're black" no longer has a right to exist. To continue to allow the block to exist, meant, 1, I continued to be unconscious, and for reasons other than writing, I try to do my best to be "militant" about due diligence. 2, everything Octavia stood for in regard to being a human being, whose legacy is worth carrying on, and not because she was black and not because she was a woman, made it hard to ignore and insulting to her memory if I didn't at the very least try to bring my stories into the light.

There is much momentum in trying. I've seen people give 2 craps about something and it comes into being with little effort.

What can I do when I put Love around an idea? That's some pretty powerful stuff. I met an artist and yoga instructor who wrote paper on an Octavia Butler series for her class. I met a professor who taught Parable of the Sower to her students. Many of them loved it so much they read Parable of the Talents on their own.

So that's where I am at the moment. I sent the beta readers Tempest Makers late last night, and instead of twiddling my thumbs, I'll read Kindred and work on text for a website.

Take care.

Talk to you later.