Sarah Chorn's Blog, page 26

Deep Dive | Bacha Posh

I’m really nervous about this post. It’s hella long, but I also always feel like I say things terribly and stick my foot in it with topics like this. I tried really, really hard not to… but the anxiety is there because the last thing – THE LAST THING – I want to do is offend the entire planet, or even a few people on the planet.

So… deep breath.

Here it goes.

I am about halfway into writing An Elegy for Hope. I’m past that weird starting-out portion where I am trying to find my legs. I’m in the middle chunk where everything is getting into place and I can see the clear trajectory of the story. It feels good. No, it feels great.

And I guess, because of that, I’ve decided to do a deep dive about a world-building element that is not in Seraphina’s Lament, but will play a big (huge) role in An Elegy for Hope.

I want to talk to you a bit about the bacha posh.

The first time I encountered the term “bacha posh” was when I randomly picked up this book from the library a few years ago. The author, one Jenny Nordberg, is an investigative journalist. She was in Afghanistan during, and after the war started over there. In her effort to see how the lives of women were changing, she stumbled upon, what she called, was a “third type of child.” Nordberg was, in fact, one of the first western journalists to document this rather secretive social tradition.

Let me elaborate.

Afghanistan is a very patriarchal society, and often a daughter is seen as a burden, and the birth of a son is seen as beneficial. For a family who has only had girls, not having a son does not only heaps upon them a negative social impact – often the birth of girls reflects poorly on the parents. There is gossip, and families with only daughters can even miss out on opportunities due to not having a son. But also there are problems. Women cannot leave the house alone, for example. They cannot do certain chores. They can’t work or bring in an income.

Bacha posh (literally translated as “dressed up as a boy”) is a workaround for those families. This usually happens when the girls are still small children, and they often transition back to being girls when they hit puberty. The transition back to being a girl, is, as you can imagine, difficult for many of these children.

Furthermore, some people believe that raising a daughter as “bacha posh” will increase their luck in having a son later.

One family, interviewed in this CNN article, discusses why they raised their third daughter bacha posh:

After having two girls, Mangal’s parents longed for a son. “We made her like a son to help her father,” said mother Amena. (from the linked article)

Often, children are raised bacha posh in families that have more daughters, and fewer sons, which implies that this is a very contextual cultural practice in Afghanistan. Raising a girl as a boy allows them to partake in income-generating activities, education, and more free mobility than girls can experience.

But, as you can imagine, there are risks. as I show from this quoted bit of a National Geographic article where the parents of two bacha posh teens discuss some of the difficulties their children are facing:

But as they get older and puberty reveals their biological gender, life becomes more difficult—and dangerous. The family has moved the family multiple times to avoid the harassment. On the street, people yell that they’re anti-Islamic and call them transsexual. Their father drives Ali to school so she gets there safely, and Setar stopped going “because she got fed up with being called names,” says d’Aki.

Both parents now want them to start dressing and behaving like girls, but neither Ali nor Setar want to. “It’s really hard to be a woman in Afghanistan, and you don’t have a lot of options. Even in these cases you haven’t decided this for yourself, someone else has decided for you,” says d’Aki. “These girls have had a little bit of freedom and then all of a sudden they have to go back to being women in a country where women have no possibilities.”

Also, from the same article, are some of the gender identity issues these kids may grapple with:

Now Setar is a 16-year-old who plays football and has a girlfriend who doesn’t care about gender. Her sister Ali, 14, has a box of love letters written by female admirers. At home, neither get up to help when their sisters and mother make meals and tea.

While this might sound like a recipe for gender dysphoria, Psychology Today says that:

Reading this description [of gender dysphoria], it seems the bacha posh tradition could very easily induce a secondary gender dysphoria of sorts. But the gender dysphoria resulting from the bacha posh tradition hints at a larger problem. The vast gender gap in Afghanistan and other countries could cause many women or girls to desire to be treated as a member of the opposite gender. Why be a girl when you could be so much more as a boy? Again, the effects this practice has on young Afghan women can only be surmised from the collection of anecdotes from bacha poshs but it does seem that many reflect on their time as a boy wistfully and lament being returned to the female gender.

The article continues on to say that sometimes the experiences of being a boy, often has a positive impact of making the women more assertive, more independent, and better educated, and sites the fact that several high ranking, famous Afghan women were actually raised bacha posh, and perhaps some of their assertiveness and success can be accredited to their time as a boy. Furthermore, it says, that often the issues surrounding bacha posh life point, rather than at the issue of gender dysphoria, the bigger issue of gender inequality in these societies and how it dramatically impacts individuals and family groups.

In The Underground Girls of Kabul, Nordberg goes into a lot more detail, discussing some of the psychological impacts, not just of being raised a boy and then suddenly being confined to the life of a girl again, but in identifying as either male or female, in a very black and white patriarchal society. Furthermore, imagine how it must feel for Setar, mentioned above, to exist in a world where a person who “doesn’t care about gender” can be killed for the crime of not caring about gender, or for being biologically female, and having a girlfriend.

And at this point, I can almost hear you thinking, “Cool, but what the hell does this have to do with your writing?”

An Elegy for Hope has an expanded world from Seraphina’s Lament, and part of developing this other land, has been researching social and cultural practices to color this world. I’ve always been really interested in the bacha posh system. I find it both fascinating to see how people work around dramatic gender inequalities like those faced in Afghanistan, but also how those systems can psychologically impact the individuals involved.

While Psychology Today might be correct regarding gender dysphoria in a broad sense, Nordberg, in her book, interviewed a group of individuals who had been raised bacha posh, and then, for one reason or another, just couldn’t identify as female, when they were supposed to, and/or refused to fulfill the obligations required of them as female. Some of them ran away from home, some of them were cast out of their families. They banded together and lived in a suburb in Kabul. And there has to be more out there, who live the lives expected of them, but never feel comfortable in them (and you can find a lot of interviews with individuals that fit in this category online, and in books, like Nordberg’s).

Now, to mix into this I should say that there is a long and illustrious tradition of women in Afghanistan serving as royal guards and things of that nature, so it is guessed that, while the practice of bacha posh has never been written down until recently, that perhaps the system has roots in Afghanistan’s distant history.

So, put all that together, I’ve got a point of view character (named Amara) who was raised bacha posh. Writing him (the fact that I’m using the “him” pronoun in the context of this long blog post should give you some clues) has been one of the most challenging, enlightening experiences in my writing life. I’ve got a bevy of nonbinary and gender fluid sensitivity readers helping me write this particular character and his experiences, and I will candidly say that speaking to them has been extremely illuminating.

I did end up placing my point of view character in a rather “high” role as a palace guard (see the small paragraph about palace guards above), so this individual is given more liberties than most (necessary for the plot) would find in Afghanistan, for example. Including grudging acceptance as being male-identifying, though always on kept on the “fringes” of the social structure due to that. That being said, there are moments where Amara is misgendered, or just doesn’t fit (as one of my sensitivity readers said to me, “There are times when I just don’t exist. I’m in a room with really womanly women and manly men, and I just do not exist.)

I specifically decided to refer to this character as “him” rather than “they,” which would honestly probably fit best. There are a few reasons for this. Mostly, this is due to a tweet I saw online, as odd as that sounds. I wish I could link to it, but I can’t find it anymore. Anyway, when I was noodling Amara’s creation, I saw a tweet where someone said something along the lines of (summarized, not a direct quote), “I wish English speakers would realize that not all languages have a gender-neutral pronoun available to use, so it’s either he or she. There’s no “they” alternative. That doesn’t mean I’m any less nonbinary.” And I thought, “God that would make this entire situation so much harder, so I should probably do it.” (That’s how I roll. Also, I never really realized what a luxury “they” could be until I thought about how hard it would be to be nonbinary, and not really have a word that fits you. That’s got to be a discomfort.) Also, the Red Desert is a very black and white place, and having a “they” in a world like that just doesn’t fit.

Writing Amara has required a ton of research, not just into this social tradition in Afghanistan, but it’s also involved a lot of asking people who are willing to be open about personal things, like gender dysphoria, and life as a nonbinary identifying human. And, the personal insights into this character, when they read his POV chapters, has been beyond insightful.

I will also take this time to toot the horn of sensitivity readers. Use them. Love them. You can do a ton of reading on a topic, but there are things you will never, ever know unless you speak to someone who lives it, lived it, and understands it intimately. I’ve got five sensitivity readers for this character. If this character ends up coming across as real, then it’s not because of my research, but because of my sensitivity readers who have helped educate me, and pointed out places where Amara’s experiences would be different than I imagined them to be.

I’ve learned so much (SO. MUCH.) from my sensitivity readers.

Aaannnd… wow this is long. I guess I’ll cut it here.

Book Review | Terminal Alliance – Jim C. Hines

About the book

When the Krakau came to Earth, they planned to
invite humanity into a growing alliance of sentient species.



This would have worked out better for all
involved if they hadn’t arrived after a mutated plague wiped out half the
planet, turned the rest into shambling, near-unstoppable animals, and basically
destroyed human civilization. You know—your standard apocalypse.



The Krakau’s first impulse was to turn their
ships around and go home. After all, it’s hard to establish diplomatic
relations with mindless savages who eat your diplomats.



Their second impulse was to try to fix us.



A century later, human beings might not be what
they once were, but at least they’re no longer trying to eat everyone. Mostly.



Marion “Mops” Adamopoulos is surprisingly bright
(for a human). As a Lieutenant on the Earth Mercenary Corps Ship Pufferfish,
she’s in charge of the Shipboard Hygiene and Sanitation team. When a bioweapon
attack by an alien race wipes out the Krakau command crew and reverts the rest
of the humans to their feral state, only Mops and her team are left with their
minds intact.



Escaping the attacking aliens—not to mention her
shambling crewmates—is only the beginning. Sure, Mops and her assortment of
space janitors and plumbers can clean the ship, but flying the damn thing is
another matter. As they struggle to keep the Pufferfish functioning and find a
cure for their crew, they stumble onto a conspiracy that could threaten the
entire alliance.



A conspiracy born from the truth of what
happened on Earth all those years ago…

358 pages (hardcover)
Published by DAW books
Publication date: November 7, 2017
Author’s website
Buy the book

This book was a library loan (and I think I have an ARC too, but I read the library version because I’m cool like that). Yay libraries!

Well, I read this book about a thousand years ago, and then life happened and I forgot to review it. I suppose I’m currently operating on the idea of “better late than never.”

Jim C. Hines is one of my favorite authors. He has this uncanny ability to write serious books in a fun way. He tends to wrap up his plots, which often are weighty and thought-provoking, in a humorous skin, which makes the whole thing more palatable. I never really feel like he’s hitting me over the head with his seriousness, rather, I enjoy my forays into his world(s) because, while I do tend to leave them with a lot on my mind, I enjoy the hell out of my time there.

This really isn’t any different than his other books in that respect. The book focuses on a group of janitors on a spaceship (called the Pufferfish). They are a rather motley crew, all of them unique and memorable for different reasons. However, they are all so very well developed, with a keen eye on each character’s strengths, and their weaknesses, which served to make them jump off the page. By the time the book was over, I felt like I was leaving behind good friends.

The plot, as I mentioned above, is rather serious, though it’s balanced well with all the brevity that surrounds it. That’s not to say that the whole book is a laugh-out-loud chuckle-fest. There are serious moments. There are points when, in conversation, the characters all leveled themselves out in a way that felt both real, but appropriately solemn. Can I say that that’s another thing I love about Hines’s work? He always knows when to make things as serious as the situation warrants, and also knows when to drop in witty banter to lighten the mood at the most perfect times.

Anyway,
the plot.

Terminal Alliance tells the story of humanity, after a plague has been released, which wiped out half of the population, and regressed the other half so they are little better than animals. Then, the Krakau (another interstellar race) come to help, giving humanity a way forward, as it were. Slowly, culture is formed and developed, and humanity becomes more of an interstellar race more than an earthbound, rather animalistic one. Insert our team of janitors, who find themselves on the Pufferfish. An alien bioweapon attack wipes out everyone but Mops (one of the janitors) and her crew, and reverts humanity back to its savage state.

The plot follows this group, the most unsuited for the task ahead of them as can possibly be imagined, as they try to navigate uncharted waters, fly a spaceship they aren’t trained to fly, and try to heal a crew that has been infected with some unknown disease. Under all of this, is a conspiracy which is slowly revealed as the book progresses.

This book is billed as a humorous space opera, and while it is funny (everything Hines writes tends to make me laugh in the best way), the book is actually one of the better space operas I’ve read, with a ton of layers and depth. Something is always happening somewhere to someone, and there’s never really a dull moment. More, though, is the stunning amount of thought and work Hines obviously put into the development of this new, futuristic world he’s created. There’s a lot here to chew on, and a lot to laugh about. While Hines does, at times, shine a mirror on us so we might look back at ourselves, it’s never heavy-handed. There’s a grace about how Hines handles complex topics, and a real balancing act, which he performs perfectly, between serious, funny, and thoughtful.

It’s delightful. Seriously.

In my humble opinion, this is one of Hines’s strongest books. It’s got everything that makes Hines an author to watch: humor, complex characters, complex world-building, and a thought-provoking plot.

The second book, Terminal Uprising is out, and I believe the third book has been delayed due to some personal situations that Hines and his family is currently facing (my thoughts are with them). Regardless, if you’re looking for something to read that’s a bit off the beaten path, and fantastically well developed and written, you’re doing yourself a huge disservice if you don’t pick up this book.

5/5
stars

Announcing | Writer’s Refuge

One week ago, I decided to start an online writing community. I did this on Facebook, and I mostly did it because I wanted somewhere to go to talk to writers about the art (and trials) facing writing. (Yes, I know other groups like this exist, but I wanted my own corner because apparently I’m a control freak). Well, the group is a week old now. I’m just shy of 80 members, with regular participation from members.

I have some features I’m starting up which I hope will be regular. Today I started a critiques thread, where we share the first 300ish words of our works in progress and get constructive critiques from members of the group (which I’m thinking will turn into a weekly thing). Wednesdays is going to be Book Quote Wednesdays. Every day I mine the internet and try to post a handful of writing stuff I find that others might find helpful – writing advice, world-building tips, character development tricks, whatever. There’s also regular questions/comments/postings from other people in the group.

I’ve been very pleased with how all this is coming along. It’s exactly what I wanted: a community of writers from novices to traditionally published authors, all coming together to support and help each other out.

So, I decided to add another thing to it. Eventually I’d like this to become a weekly feature, but for now it’s going to be “whenever I can set it up”. The idea is to have someone who works in the industry/published books/is published/has other expertise to come to the group for a day (authors, agents, editors, hell – I’m even thinking of cover artists and map makers as well), and answer craft-focused questions. Basically, my thinking was that a lot of people have a lot of questions about tons of different aspects of writing, publishing, and the industry in general but don’t have a way to really ask those questions. I know people, so my goal is to facilitate a space where people with information, experience, and insights can give that experience, information, and insights to people who need those things.

Essentially, if you’ve got writing/industry questions, I want these “Craft Questions” days to be all about you. I’ll work to present people to you who can answer questions about various aspects of the industry, and all you gotta do is bring your questions and be ready to ask them. Those who are willing to be in the hot seat have permission to take the questions they’ve been asked, and use them in blog posts or whatever as publicity/talking points etc.

So, all if this is my long, rambling way to invite you to an event.

This week I’m starting my first “Craft Questions” event. If you’re a writer (from novice to experienced) then feel free to swing by the group. Thursday is the first round of Craft Questions, which will be with traditionally published author Scott Oden. Read on for more information!

I’m pleased to announce that this Thursday in Writer’s Refuge (the online writing group I started) we will be kicking off Craft Questions, which, I hope, will become a pretty regular thing in this group. So if you have any questions you’d like to ask traditionally published author Scott Odenabout writing, the process of publishing, his experiences in the industry, etc., bring them with you on THURSDAY. 

A little about the author: 

SCOTT ODEN was born in Indiana, but has spent most of his life shuffling between his home in rural North Alabama, a Hobbit hole in Middle-earth, and some sketchy tavern in the Hyborian Age. He is an avid reader of fantasy and ancient history, a collector of swords, and a player of tabletop role-playing games. When not writing, he can be found walking his two dogs or doting over his lovely wife, Shannon. Oden’s books include the historical fantasies: The Lion of Cairo, A Gathering of Ravens, and the forthcoming Twilight of the Gods. He is also the author of two historical novels, Men of Bronze and Memnon.

Oden has an ongoing novella serialized in Marvel’s Savage Sword of Conan.

LINKS: 

Oden’s Macmillan page
Amazon
Webpage

If you’d like to participate in this event, please click on this link, and I’ll approve you as soon as I see your request come through.

Map of The Bloodlands

When I wrote Seraphina’s Lament, and made the decision to publish it, I didn’ t have a ton of money. Hell, I still don’t. Chronic illness is expensive, folks. Anyway, as luck would have it, I have a friend who makes AMAZING fantasy maps. He was willing to work out a deal with me, and together over the past few weeks he’s been working on this map.

I’ve always kind of wanted a map of The Bloodlands, but I wasn’t exactly sure how much anyone would care, or even IF anyone would care. I didn’t know if it would be important or worth the time invested in it. However, I have had a few readers comment that they’d really love a map in the books.

I decided to take the leap.

While Seraphina’s Lament focuses only on the Sunset Lands, with the Red Desert mentioned, the actual landscape covered is pretty narrow. In An Elegy for Hope, the world expands quite a bit, and in A Requiem for Fate, the scope will broaden even more. So I had to make a decision. Do I JUST make a map of the Sunset Lands, or should I cover all the territory that will come into play over all three of the books?

I decided to make one map that pretty much covers all the land that will be played in throughout the trilogy. That way, it can go in all three books. I specifically did not add certain elements that will give away plot points and could be considered spoilers.

The map itself is still in the beta phase, but I love it so much I asked for permission to show it off in its current incarnation (though Michael keeps saying it needs tweaking). Once it’s done, I’ll update Seraphina’s Lament with a copy of this map in it, and I’ll make sure it lands in An Elegy for Hope and A Requiem for Fate as well.

I didn’t really expect it to be such a moving experience to see the world I created in my head on paper like this, but it really has been quite surreal. I’ve spent a lot of time just looking at it, and marveling. It’s just… it’s really something else to see it. And Michael Baker is an incredible artist with a real zeal for the cartography craft.

He’s also always open for more clients, so check out his website here. Tell him I sent you.

Anyway, here’s the map. Isn’t it incredible??

Announcement | Of Honey and Wildfires

First things first, I’m about 40,000 words into An Elegy for Hope, but this book is a beast and while writing it is fun, it’s requiring just an absolutely shocking amount of research and the going is slow. I’m aiming for publication early in 2020, hopefully in January or February. This book expands the world a bit, and while characters in Seraphina’s Lament do play a role, and they do appear and have POV chapters, the bulk of the story will be told from other characters.

It’s been a journey, and to give you a feel for what kind of research this has required, I’ve had to do a lot of reading on the history of concentration camps, and the Russian side of World War II. I also have a ton (TON) of sensitivity readers, the bulk of which are either polyamorous, nonbinary, or are, or work with (caretakers), nonvocal individuals.

So, it’s taking time. I am being slow, and very careful. I’d rather go slow and get it right than rush it.

On the side, I’ve started writing another project. I didn’t actually expect it to go anywhere, it was sort of a thing to do to let my writing mind have some space to run while I gnawed on ideas and issues with An Elegy for Hope. I was working on it a bit the other day and realized that I’d sailed right past 50,000 words and was nearly to 60,000, so it’s basically a book. I also realized that I really like it, and I think I am going to pursue publishing it.

This one has been a lot easier to write (in some ways) but a lot harder in others (I have never written in first-person before, and adjusting to it has been a huge challenge for me. For one thing, I can’t pop around the way I can with multiple third-person POV chapters.). The rate things are going, Of Honey and Wildfires should be publishable sometime around November (I’m guessing, and this is, of course, if no more health drama falls on me).

So I guess I’m announcing that I should in a soon-ish fashion, have another book on the market.

Let me tell you a little about it.

Of Honey and Wildfires basically tells the story of one woman’s radicalization through the eyes of her slave (Apparently I’ve got a thing about slavery. I think it’s tragic and fascinating to learn about, and write about.). This book is set in a secondary world that is bound by caste and tradition, complete with an economic system based on slavery, and a magic system built on the human body. It’s completely unrelated to Seraphina’s Lament and etc.

The book takes place in a city called Heart, which is run by four crime families. Due to the fact that I am absolutely obsessed with weaving history into my books, I’ve been taking a lot of the inspiration for this one from ancient world slave systems in Egypt and Greece, primarily, and the caste systems that are derived from these models. It’s been really interesting to research. I’ve also been reading a lot of books on radicalization, mostly on the radicalization of women surrounding Isis, because there’s just a ton of very new, very informative, very candid stories surrounding that. And as for the magic system, it is… well, it’s really dark and morbid and has required a TON of research into prehistoric cannibalism.

You’re welcome.

So, with all that said, Of Honey and Wildfires is happening. I’m going to probably focus most of my current writing efforts on finishing it up, and I’ll keep you updated as to the progress of it, and various estimations and timeline details when I get them a bit more ironed out.

If you want to see some snippets from this, here are two. Just keep in mind, they are first draft, and completely 100% unedited (I do absolutely zero editing AT ALL until after my first draft is complete).

This is how the book begins.



This is just a part I like.

So that’s what I’ve got in the works. Hopefully, I’ve wet your whistle a bit, so when I start talking about this more, someone out there will care. And of course, I will update you with some stuff from An Elegy for Hope as well. In fact, here’s a snippet from that book, just because I feel like sharing it with you.

And… that’s about it. There’s some snippets, my writing progress, some things to look for in the near future and… yeah. I should have another Deep Dive post up this week, this one will probably be about Stalin’s collective farming, and an introduction to his Five Year plans.

Deep Dive | Russian Peasant Life, and the Mir

I’ve been
noodling how I want to attack my next Deep Dive topic for a while now. The
problem is, it’s so expansive, and there’s just so much of it, and I used so
much of what I learned as jumping-off points for my worldbuilding, that I just
don’t think it can all fit in one post. So, how do I break it up?

First of
all, I think it’s essential to say what I am talking about here. I want to talk
to you a bit about the obshchina, and the mir, some issues the serfs faced,
some of their lifestyle habits, traditions and risks, and then dovetail it into
Stalin’s collectivism and his goal and desire to modernize and industrialize.
This, of course, nicely flows into the Holodomor, which is really what is the
foundational influence for my entire trilogy. The problem is, you can’t really
talk about the Holodomor until you understand what came before it. So, I feel
like I would be doing you a disservice if I didn’t set the stage, as it were.

And,
looking at all of that, I think it’s pretty obvious that I’ve got at least
three posts here. At least.

Today I’m
going to talk a bit about the life of serfs in Russia, the mir and its role in
peasant life, and some of the struggles they faced, as well as traditions, and etc.,
and how I used some of what I learned in all of that to influence the worldbuilding
of my trilogy.

Buckle up.

Back
before the Emancipation
of the Serfs in 1861 by Tsar Alexander II, a vast majority of Russians lived
in the countryside, on communal farmland which was divided between all the peasants
who lived in that one area.

In order to understand why the collective ownership of land matters, it’s important to understand, really, how limited serfs were. Essentially, before 1861, serfs, in Russia, were little more than slaves. They had no rights, they were not citizens, they could not own land, or any of their own property. The legal code of Ivan III in 1497 increased dependency the serfs felt on nobles to a shocking degree, making it legal to separate and sell families, and even punishable for serfs to leave their land for a time period of longer than a week. In the late 1500’s under Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible), it was made illegal for serfs to leave the land they worked at all, regardless of conditions, making the stranglehold on them even tighter.

“A Peasant Leaving His Landlord on Yuri’s Day,” painting by Sergei V. Ivanov.

Most nobility who owned serfs, it should be said, infrequently, if ever, visited their lands, and left the running of their serfs to appointed people who, in the way of people, varied greatly in how they treated those they ruled over. Some were great, but others were horrible and abusive, and there was nothing the serfs could do about it.

Yemelyan Pugachev

Now, in the way things happen, things change. Pressures rose up, rebellions took place, and restrictions on serfs loosened. In the 1700s, a few changes rose up that impacted the ultimate fate of serfs in Russia. First, Peter III ended mandatory military service for serfs, and compulsory state service for nobles. This allowed more serfs to stay with their families and gave the nobility more time on their lands. This, many say, laid the foundation for the eventual abolishment of serfdom. Second, church estates were secularized and transferred, along with their peasants, to state jurisdiction. This also led to a rebellion, years after Peter III’s death by a man named Yemelyan Pugachev, who said he was Peter III. He claimed he had, in fact, not died, but spent his years traveling around the Holy Land, and he had returned to liberate the serfs. His movement was wildly popular, and a huge catalyst to the measures I will discuss next.

In 1775, Catherine II allowed people to be prosecuted for how their serfs were treated. These measures were strengthened several times until the eventual measure ending serfdom passed in 1861.

So, serf
life was pretty terrible. Total dependence on the state, and absolutely no
rights until 1775, and even then, those “rights” were pretty paltry at best,
and easily overlooked if someone had the will and desire to do so.

How did
serfs deal?

Well, in a
lot of ways.

Serf life was arranged in communes, of sorts. Serfs collectively “owned” land they lived on (they didn’t actually own the land, the state did, but they worked it, and therein lies the root of so many of the state/peasant problems), but these lands had to be regulated, so an assembly was formed. The skhod (the village assembly) was essentially a self-governing body of a group of peasants, usually made up of the eldest male members of the most powerful families in that particular collective. They were elected officials that collectively dealt with issues, punishments, arguments, as well as divvying up land (which I will talk about in a minute), and collectively gathered up taxes to pay to the state.

The mir, essentially, was a powerful communal body of peasants, with an assembly of elders, that not only gave each serf a voice, but it also worked as a collective go-between for the nobility and the serfs. They did what needed to be done.

Obshchina Gathering by Sergei Korovin

Now, as to
the ownership issue, if you remember, serfs couldn’t own anything. Not their
house. Not their land, nothing. One of the main functions of the Mir was to
divide up the workable land. The larger the family, the more land they got.
Therefore, usually once a season/year, the skhod would gather, and they would
essentially look over the people in their collective, total every family up,
and then, say your neighbor had twins over the winter, they’d be assigned more
land to work because they had more mouths to feed. Therefore, the actual amount
of land you worked, and the amount of food you grew on each plot of land,
varied from season to season depending on how large your family was, what the
people in your family needed, and things of that nature.

Important bullet points if you’re a
serf:

What you farm this year, may not be what you farm next year. The amount of land you work depends on how big your family is, and what your family needs.You do not own anythingYou have no rightsYou pay taxes as a communal group, not as an individualThe village assembly is your governing body, though they often act as a go-between for peasants and those they work for. The nobility found these groups just as beneficial and useful as the peasants did

Of course there were ways that people rebelled, if subtly. Some of them are discussed in this series of lectures. Some peasants would purposefully misunderstand what they were told to do, do their jobs poorly, or slowly, or just defiantly. Or sometimes they’d refuse to celebrate in compulsory celebrations, or they’d drink a lot, etc. These might seem like small methods of rebelling, but when you don’t have much, you can’t really do much. These behavior patterns made the ruling class often think of serfs as dolts, or too stupid to follow basic instructions, useless for anything but hard labor, etc. Punishment from the village assembly was often public, and brutal, which made many of the people in higher classes think of these peasants as little more than animals.

I’m reading this, and I realize that I hate everything I’m writing, not because it isn’t true but because there is just so much to say and I really don’t have the room to say all of it, or even really much of it. What I really wanted to do was highlight a few important points, and talk to you a bit about how I used some of this in my worldbuilding, and then throw some books for further reading at you if you have the inclination.

First of all, one of the things that have been mentioned about Seraphina’s Lament, that takes a larger stage in An Elegy for Hope and A Requiem for Fate, is the fact that polyamorous family units exist in my world.

Let me briefly touch on my polyamorous family units.

Polyamorous family units do not exist in any of the histories I’ve read. This is purely my invention, but it is based on some of my research. You see, my thinking for these polyamorous family units comes from what I said above. I took a situation: the peasant distribution of land, the fact that land was divided up depending on how large family units were, and I realized that in certain situations, a larger family unit, and more land, would mean a better chance of survival – better protection, more food, etc.

So I tried to think of ways that, other than having children, people could react to this particular situation. I wanted people to be able to make their family units bigger, WITHOUT the need to wait to have children. Sometimes social pressures happen, and you need to react faster than nine months, and then the added wait to see if your child will survive infancy or not.

Thus, I eventually landed on polyamorous family units. People who are thrust into this terrible situation, and in react. A drive for self-preservation, and of course love, end up in these families that may seem… different… to us, but have become a normal cultural practice to them. Bigger families mean more food, more land. More people means more protection of your group, by your group. It made sense to me, so I had it become a cultural part of this collective farming/mir I had patterned some of my worldbuilding in Seraphina’s Lament off of.

And there
is where my idea for polyamorous family units came from.

I also have a mir making an appearance in one of my interludes, which are heavily influenced by real-world accounts of events that actually happened (though I twisted them to fit my world). In this interlude, there is a meeting called for everyone in the collective, where the mir is gathered to discuss a new quota for how many landowners are needed to be sent to forced labor camps, as the Premier has sent new requirements to each collective for how many people they needed to arrest (this actually happened, and I will discuss it more in future Deep Dives.)

There are also scenes peppered throughout the book, like one where a woman left her collective without permission, and is forcibly separated from her son and sent to another collective to work, under watch and threat of internment in a forced labor camp. Movement for peasants was very, very restricted, and I showed this subtly throughout the book, in passages like this.

These
things happened. This was life, and I tried very, very hard to stay as true to
them as I could, while taking liberties where I could (like the polyamorous
family units).

History is fascinating, and it gives a ton of jumping-off points for worldbuilding in the books we write, and read. It’s also just interesting. Maybe these brief bullet points will show you how I’ve learned from, and twisted history to fit my world of the Bloodlands, and perhaps give you the desire to learn more, because really, these things should be known.

If you’d like to read more about any of this, I suggest the following books:

A History of Russia from Peter the Great to Gorbachev
The Romanovs by Simon Sebag Montefiore
Red Fortress: The Secret Heart of Russia’s History by Catherine Merridale
This website is also a great jumping-off point for almost everything

In my next Deep Dive, I will talk a bit about collective farming, the march to industrialization, and Stalin’s Five Year Plans.

Deep Dive | The Tenth-Century Slavic Slave Trade

If you’re
an author, or an editor, or really just a person who uses the internet, you
understand how researching one thing often leads to hours spent traveling down
pathways you’ve never expected, until your mind is full of details about things
you’d never imagined you’d ever need to know.

Writing my Bloodlands trilogy, starting with Seraphina’s Lament, has really been an exercise in diving down rabbit holes. While my books are set in a secondary world, they are very much based on real-world history. The things I research are often used as jumping off points for details that make their way in my books. That being said, I am not Russian, nor Ukrainian, nor is anyone in any of the many generations mapped out on the DNA tests both of my parents have done. I did not take classes in college that covered much of this history, or this area of the world. I am not a Russian Studies major. My knowledge going into this was (and still is) rudimentary at best. The subject matter, however, caught my attention. It’s turned from research for my writing, into personal interest.

I have
spent more time in the past three years reading books about Russian, Slav, and
(now, due to expanding the world in An
Elegy for Hope, Afghan) history than I ever imagined possible. I’ve learned
a lot of really cool things that rev my engine and really broaden my
understanding of the world I live in. I asked the internet if anyone would be
interested in me writing some articles about the things I’ve researched, and
how I’ve fit them into my secondary world and the story I’m telling, and a lot
more people said they would be interested in some of the stuff I’ve learned
than I expected.

Therefore, today I would like to talk a bit about the tenth-century Slavic slave trade, specifically to the Middle East, and how I used it for some world building in the Bloodlands.

One of the
first things I introduce in Seraphina’s
Lament, is the fact that Seraphina is pale, exotic, and a slave. And there’s
a pretty good historical reason for why I made her that way. A few chapters
later it’s revealed that her twin brother is an escaped slave. Kabir, another
character, has some “pale slave” in him, which basically means that somewhere
back in his family someone had a baby with a slave and produced a line of
children with skin that is just a bit too light to be socially acceptable.

Slavery is
something that has distinct connotations, often involving Africa, and ships,
horrible raids, the trafficking of bodies, and tragic, terrible abuses that
still dramatically impact individuals today. Slavery is, and always will be a
horrible blot on history, a crime that shows just how cruel humans are willing
to be to people who are deemed “other.”

However,
the slavery I called upon for development of the slavery in The Bloodlands (which I elaborate on a
bit with An Elegy for Hope, where I
will discuss, for example, the slave raids that acquired these “pale slaves”
and brought them into the Sunset Lands in the first place, and the economy that
supported such a thing) wasn’t the African slave trade, but rather the Slavic
slave trade around the tenth century.

In fact,
back in the tenth century, the Slavic slave trade was doing quite well.

I want to start out by saying that for much of history, slavery wasn’t really something that was questioned. In the Roman Empire, for example, it can be argued that the enslavement of people served as one of the bedrocks of their economic system. When the empire fell, and serfdom rose up in Europe, followed by feudal systems, slavery sort of slipped away, but it didn’t disappear completely. There are records of feuding individuals taking slaves, and plenty of Europeans acted as funnels for the slave trade, moving people from one location to another and making a living off of it, as I will touch on below. Furthermore, while slavery did die down for a while, after the Black Plague, there was another surge of it in Europe, as there was a dramatic need for hard labor, and a shortage of people who were able, or willing, to do so. In the 1400’s, Crimea, a uniquely positioned peninsula, had one of the largest slave markets in the region. (more here)

The term Ṣaqāliba, is used in medieval Arabic to refer to Slavs, or people from Central and Eastern Europe who were slaves. In the Arab world, Saqaliba served in numerous ways, as servants, laborers, soldiers, concubines and the like. The blonde haired, blued eyed men and women were especially prized for their unique features.

Slavs were often captured by European Christians and funneled through Europe through various ports and cities. This was not frowned upon, as one would assume it would be, due to the fact that the Slavs were not considered either Christian, or Muslim. Therefore, they were not protected by the doctrine of either religion. Muslim law for example, at the time, forbade enslaving preexisting Muslims, but had no qualms with non-Muslims. And Christians had a very similar outlook regarding their own religion. While some Slavs were Christian, many still adhered to tribal religion, and were largely seen as still being pagan, thus religious protections did not apply to them. (More here)

Furthermore, tribal warfare, and constantly changing
boundaries due to an unsettled people in this region made exploitation and the
capture and sale of individuals easy. As slave traders would, throughout
history, always find an easy way to fill their coffers with internal strife
amongst a group. (I should note, slaves were not strictly only taken from
Slavic regions. There are also historical notes about slaves favored from the
north and northwestern European regions.) (More here)
There are some historical cues from archeological digs, and records of entire
tribes disappearing from regions of Poland, Ukraine, and other areas. While
many factors do play into this, it’s almost impossible to not extrapolate that
the slave trade probably did play a certain role.

Slavs captured by Christians were often sent to Muslim lands
like Spain and Egypt through central Europe, and France. Prague was another
city that served as a popular funnel for Slavic slaves, where merchants would
often castrate the men before sending them on, down to areas in the Middle
East. The importance of castration is discussed a bit below.

In an academic article entitle, “Dirhams
for Slaves: Investigating the Slavic Slave Trade in the Tenth Century”
an argument is made regarding tracking the slave trade, and popular slave
trading routes at the time, by hoards of dirhams found, or silver minted coins
from various Islamic regions at the time, stamped with both location and date
of minting. These stamps make them invaluable ways for archeologists and
historians to track things like popular trading routes, for example. One of the
biggest hoards has been found in Poland. From the article:

The Rus, in this instance, are the go-betweens. The people
who work in getting the slaves from point A, to point B – the market.

Slavic slaves were seen as being good for a few things, from
administrative work, to labor, and army service. There are historical documents
discussing how the castration of a Saqaliba makes them a better, more
hard-working slave. While Slavic slaves do have numerous and diverse roles, they
seem to find more of a place as domestic servants, concubines, and eunuchs in more
highly placed areas, like palaces (more here)
and I leaned on this a bit for my own development of slavery in my series.
Their pale skin, light hair, and light eyes made them exotic, and exotic made a certain social statement,
as it so often does.

In the Book of Animals,
for example, the author al-Jahiz talks about how to improve a Slavic slave
(from the same article referenced above).

(Okay, admittedly I’m throwing this last image in here just because I find it both horrifying and interesting and you’re welcome.)

Not all slavery ended in poverty and destitution. In Spain, for example, slaves are found in the historical record who become leaders of provinces, and men who moved armies. And in some regions, freeing a slave was seen as a great act of social welfare, a pious move that a good person made for the betterment of his soul.

So, with all this said, and plenty of books and articles for you, dear reader, to use and jumping off points for further research if you so desire, how did I boil down all that information into a slavery system in The Bloodlands? Well, as with most things, about 99% of what I learned got filed in my “that’s interesting but I’ll never use it” folder. Though I will say that even though a lot of my research will never actually make it into my books, it absolutely helps give me context, which in turn helps me build my world in a better, more well-rounded way.

What I kept, was the “exotic” and racial aspect of this particular slavery. There are references in Seraphina’s Lament to freed slaves, which I felt was important to add in – not just that there was slavery, but there was a way out of it as well. And of course I wanted to touch on the social strata that divides the owned, from those who own. In An Elegy for Hope, the actual act of getting slaves, through raids, barter, and sale by an intermediary group of people will be touched on a bit more, as well as its economic impact. In Seraphina’s Lament, however, I really just wanted to subtly set the basis and parameters for this economic system, which was widespread, if tragic and dark, in its own right.

History is layered, deep, and full of nuance. I really dove
down a rabbit hole regarding Slavic slave trade, and this is maybe 10% of
everything I’ve actually read about it. Maybe 1% of it is used to craft the
world of The Bloodlands, but that
other 99% is useful in giving me, the author of it, the context I need to bring
that 1% that I do use, to realistic life for my readers.

The BEST kind of update

So, an update.

The long and short of it is, after a bunch of tests – A BUNCH OF TESTS – and all signs – ALL SIGNS – pointing to lymphoma, it turns out that, wonder of wonders (seriously), I do not actually have lymphoma.

My neck dissection happened a little over a week ago. Then there was all this waiting while everything hovered in the balance. My doctor said he’d talk to me about chemo after the surgery. I mean, we were all sooooooooooo sure I had lymphoma. My parents were planning on coming up to help with the kids while I was going through it, maybe renting a house and all that. I mean, it was pretty much a done deal. Then, I go in for my post-surgery appointment and the biopsies and all that came back and… I DON’T HAVE CANCER.

After
the shock settled and my heart stopped skipping beats and I pinched myself a
few times to make sure I was really awake and this was actually happening, it
was explained that somehow the sinus infection I had clear back in November
(which ended up being treated by antibiotics for like three months, ended up
eating through my sinuses, and causing bleeding that nearly resulted in a blood
transfusion, and ultimately surgery in April) got into my lymph nodes and
caused them to mutate in such a way that mimicked lymphoma. There’s apparently
some really long, weird name for it, and it’s kind of rare, but I had all the
signs. It looked like lymphoma. It acted like lymphoma. I even had some of the symptoms
(exhaustion, night sweats, etc), but it was not lymphoma.

Now
that the mutated nodes are out of my neck, I’m already starting to feel better.
The downside is that now that I’ve had this, there’s every reason to think I’ll
get more, but now at least we’re aware, and if I get them again, we’ll know how
to take care of them, and to remove them ASAP.

So,
no cancer. Another weird thing, but no cancer.

Now,
after a few months of circling the drain, and feeling like everything –
EVERYTHING – was up in the air and dire, I’m coming back to myself. It’s slow.
I’ve been really sick for about eight months now, and I really do feel like I’m
waking up for the first time after a very long slumber. It’s a bit of a shock
to my system.

However,
I am coming back.

And things are happening. First, I’ve entered Seraphina’s Lament into the SPFBO. (To be completely candid, I live with low expectations, so this is pretty much as much as I’m anticipating to happen with my book in that contest.) It’s kind of an interesting experience being on this side of things after being a judge for so many years. Luckily, my cover made the semi-finals for the cover art contest, which is really cool. My cover artist is Pen Astridge, and she deserves all the props. The woman is crazy talented.

Secondly, the second book in the series, An Elegy for Hope, is in the works. I’m about 40k words into it. The world is expanding, and I’m really liking some of the new characters I’ve created. I’ve been doing a lot of research and… more on this in a bit.

Third, I’m open for editing again, which is good because I’ve got some serious medical bills.

Fourth,
I’m thinking of doing a series of blog posts, here or somewhere else if someone
wants them, about the historical research I’ve done, and am doing for this
series. People ask me about my research ALL THE TIME, and how I fit it into my
books. I also get really excited about the things I learn, and dropping a post
about it whenever I feel the inclination would give me a way to pretend that
someone else cares. Some topics, for example, would be:

The tenth century Slavic slave trade,
and how I used it for the basis of slavery in the BloodlandsWorld War II front-line Russian
poetsAnna AkhmatovaCollective farming in Russia in the
1920’s and how I took that and made polyamorous family units from itVarious aspects of the Holodomor,
and how/why I used them in my worldBacha Posh (a huge plot point in An
Elegy for Hope)The Kushan Empire (circa 30ad – 375ad,
think Silk Road)

And
really so much more. So… really, expect random articles about this stuff to pop
up as I do research for my series.

Also, a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time ago I changed my focus from traditionally published books to more small press and self-published books. People sent me books. I haven’t forgotten you, I’ve just been so sick. Seriously, people, I don’t think you understand how sick I’ve been these past few months. I’m back on the horse, however, reading books and enjoying them, and when I get my life a bit more sorted out, I will start reviewing them. I also got some wicked two month Kindle Unlimited deal, so if you’ve got a book on KU or you’ve read a book on KU and you think “Hey, Sarah should read this,” let me know what it is and I’ll load it on up. ‘

So,
there you go. Life, the universe, and everything.

And
holy shit, I DON’T HAVE CANCER. Talk about dodging a bullet.

An Update Involving the Big “C” Word

I have always been pretty open and honest with my health stuff because I don’t really see the point in not being open and honest with it. I generally find a lot of comfort and information from people who have “been there, done that” and I hope that maybe someone else can feel the same way regarding me. That being said, things are a bit in the air right now, and I’m being asked a ton of questions that I really only want to answer once because, honestly, I’m really having a hard time talking about any of this. So, in an effort to continue my open dialogue regarding this stuff, and also the desire to only have to really say all of this once, I’m going to lay down what’s been going on here.

This year has kicked my ass. I really can’t put it any other way. I had severe bleeding issues early in this year, which resulted in a surgery which seems to have fixed the problem, but who knows, in April. Then, in May, I went to my routine cancer screening with my cancer doctor.

I’m in remission, after three battles with that particular beast, so neither of us expected anything. He wanted me to get an ultrasound of my neck, and a ton of bloodwork done (because I’ve been battling severe, extreme, incredible exhaustion recently and we wanted to see if I had anything, like anemia to explain that). He also changed my hormone medication, to see if maybe that could help with my tired-all-the-time-ness.

My doctor and I both had the same thought. I’d do all these tests but I’d be fine because it’s been nine years since my tumor was removed and yeah, I’ve had lots of drama with recurrence and all that stuff but my scans for the past two years have all been clean and the chance of it recurring were so slim they were laughable. Basically, we were doing these tests because we had to do them for ten years just to make sure everything is clean. Once ten years after my second “all clear” PET scan is past, with ten clean scans in ten years, I’ll be considered “cancer free” rather than “in remission” and I won’t need to do these tests anymore.

He ordered a “full chemistry workup” because I’ve been so exhausted recently. Basically, he wanted to see if I was severely anemic, perhaps due to the bleeding problems I’ve had earlier this year (which was so bad, I almost needed a blood transfusion. This year has been spectacular.). I mean, it’s almost impossible to wake me up in the morning, and then I just spend the entire day in a complete fog because I’m so tired. Not like *yawn* tired, but tired to the point where I have to take a nap each day with my kid just to make it through the day, and she wakes up before I do. and then I’m ready to go to sleep for the night around five o’clock.

So I schedule the ultrasound of my neck with the hospital and get my bloodwork done on the same day. I felt really relieved after it was done. Like, “Woo! One more year down the tube, and now I start year three of remission. I’ve got this! Maybe I’ll need iron pills but so what!”

My hospital, as it happens, has an online portal for patients where we can get all of our test results, radiology reports, doctor notes and everything on it. So I logged in (because years of health drama has taught me to be on top of all of my reports and come prepared with them because a patient must ultimately advocate for themselves). So I log in, and my radiology report is there, and my blood tests are there and life is good.

Now, I expected nothing. Maybe anemia to explain my exhaustion, but nothing else.

Instead, I got a report of two “pathologically enlarged nodes” on the right side of my neck with a whole bunch of jargon attached that basically amounts to, “these suckers show all the signs of being cancerous.” The radiologist recommended a CT scan with contrast for further evaluation. My bloodwork was fine, except I’m borderline anemic, not even anemic enough to need iron pills, just kind of “meh” anemic. The reports on my red blood cell count, or whatever the hell it’s called, was kind of weird in the tests, but that amounted to “We don’t know if that’s to do with the bleeding issues you’ve had, or if something is going on with your blood that we’ll need to investigate.”

So I waited, and my doctor finally called yesterday.

He is not comfortable with basically anything that my tests showed. My exhaustion isn’t due to anemia. My red blood cells are kind of wonky. He’s sending me to a surgeon to get these cancer-looking lymph nodes removed, and possibly get a bunch of surrounding tissue biopsied. I go to my surgeon to meet with him and discuss next steps on June 7. Essentially, it’s up to the surgeon what he wants to do, but my cancer doctor faxed a long letter to my surgeon saying he is advocating surgical removal and soon, along with biopsies and necessary further testing.

While the radiologists recommended “a contrast-enhanced CT scan for further evaluation” my doctor just wants this crap out of my neck. Period. We can do tests and etc later, but right now it’s bad enough that we should skip all the in-between steps and just slice and dice that stuff out of me.

The problem in all of this is, my thyroid (which was the cancer I fought three times) is fine. My thyroid-related blood tests were fantastic. There’s “no pathology in the thyroid bed” and my TSH, which is the hormone that marks cancer and is watched very closely in people like me, is 0, which is where it should be. This basically means, I do not have thyroid cancer.

Which means, whatever is hanging out in the lymph nodes on the right side of my neck is not thyroid cancer. It’s very likely another cancer. And there can be things assumed by the placement of the pathologically exciting lymph nodes, but really, no one will know anything for sure until the lymph nodes are removed and dissected/tested, biopsies are ran, and further testing is done. Essentially, all I know right now is that I’m really, really tired all the time, and I most likely have cancer but we don’t know what it is, or where it is and we won’t until surgery and more tests are done.

So that’s my update. that’s all I know, and that’s basically 2019, so far, summarized. I’m really upset. Really raw. Lots of tears, but otherwise I’m okay. I won’t know more until after I meet with my surgeon in about two weeks. I think if this had to do with my thyroid, I wouldn’t be this upset because I’d know what to expect (seeing as how I dealt with that beast three times, for five years), but this huge “signs of cancer are there but otherwise here’s a gigantic question mark” that I’ve got hanging over me right now is the worst feeling ever.

More updates as I get them, but if you’re wondering why I’ve been so quiet, this is why. And if you’re wondering, it’s basically completely constipated my creative flow. I’m sorry, but it seems I can’t really produce anything when I’m feeling like this. Not reviews. Not writing. Not photography. Nothing. I’m just… blank.

And screaming. Inside, I’m doing a lot of screaming.

An Update

The start of this year has pretty soundly kicked my ass. I released my first book on February 19, which was awesome. However, in the middle of all of that, I’ve had some pretty major health problems kick up which have had me in and out of commission. On April 5 I had a surgery which (hopefully) fixed a host of problems. Everything is looking good so far, but I tend to have a really hard time recovering from surgery. It takes me quite a while to get my energy back.

So, with all of that going on, I realized I was too busy – between pushing a new book on people, my own health problems, surgery, family stuff, and writing another book – to give the SPFBO the time and attention it deserves, so I told the judges that I need to bow out. I was just (and still am) stretched too thin. Mark found some other wonderful reviewers to take my spot. I feel terrible about having to do that, but the fact that it’s taken over a month for me to find the time and energy to even write this update says a lot.

I’ve been pretty stressed out, and with the warm weather coming, and my garden two times bigger than it’s ever been before, I’ve been losing myself amongst my plants and posting a flurry of garden updates. It’s been my zen, my little spot where I can go to get away from myself, the things that are bothering me, and take some time to just breathe without the pressures of life weighing me down. If you follow me on social media, you’ll see a lot of garden posts. It is extremely helpful for me to be around growing, beautiful things when I am stressed out like this.

On the writer side, it’s taken me a thousand years to figure out a direction for An Elegy for Hope (The Bloodlands 2), but now that I’ve got one, things are progressing as fast as they can. Right now I’m writing this book, editing two books for clients, and pulling more hours at my day job, so I’m spread pretty thin and not getting as much progress as I want, but I’m moving forward at a steady pace, though I can feel a bit of burnout setting in. I’ve also got Shaun Duke on hand to edit this book whenever I get it done. I’m hoping by July but I just don’t know. The way the first part of this year has gone, I’m really reluctant to stick a pin in any real point in time for this book.

I haven’t had a whole lot of time to get much reading done, which is unfortunate. I’ve been reading a ton of nonfiction historical books on the siege of Leningrad, Operation Barbarossa, and things like that, if you want a hint as to the direction I’m going in An Elegy for Hope. I have a K.J. Parker book, sent to me from the lovely people at Orbit, looking at me, but I haven’t had the time to open it, which is really unfortunate, seeing as how K.J. Parker is one of my absolute favorite authors ever.

I meant to write some reviews this week, but it’s Friday morning and this is the first time in weeks I’ve had time to open my laptop and write (or read) more than about a paragraph before some chaos happens that requires my full attention.

So, this year has started out really rough for me. I’m exhausted. Nothing is going as fast as I want it to go and nothing is happening the way I want it to happen. My garden is awesome, but everything else seems to be suffering due to life just constantly happening. I’ve had a lot of health issues, a surgery that I’ve been recovering from, and exhaustion is setting in, but I’m here and I figured I’d write a bit of an update post to sort of wave my hands in the air and say, “YES, I AM STILL ALIVE I’M JUST SUPER BUSY AND TIRED.”