Nicole Field's Blog, page 17

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:tytyhub:thefingerfuckingfemalefury:<3 IT’S CAAAAAAAAAANON!IT’S...

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:

tytyhub:

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:

<3 IT’S CAAAAAAAAAANON!

IT’S CANON :D

DC COMICS BOMBSHELLS HARLEY AND IVY ARE CANON GAY AND THEY ARE CANONICALLY GIRLFRIENDS IN A RELATIONSHIP WITH EACH OTHER

SHARING BEAUTIFUL AND HELLA GAY SMOOCHES

THIS COMIC IS THE LITERAL BEST THING THAT DC PUBLISHES OR HAS EVER PUBLISHED AND I NEVER WANT IT TO END I WANT IT TO GO ON FOREVER :D

THIS IS THE KIND OF CONTENT THAT I CARE ABOUT SEEING IN MY COMICS <3

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

EVERYTHING IS AWESOME

Being Asexual: Exploring the Diversity Within the Asexual Spectrum (Part 1/2)

Being Asexual: Exploring the Diversity Within the Asexual Spectrum (Part 1/2):

Soo, I was asked a couple of weeks ago whether I would contribute to a guest post on asexuality. And then it kind of got huge, so there are now two posts. 

Here’s the second one.

22 YAs That Get it Right: LGBTQA Edition

22 YAs That Get it Right: LGBTQA Edition:

I saw my library loans were looking a little bit low and then, this morning, this post came across my feed.

Already, at first sight, I can see two books I hadn’t even heard of! Opening the link, I found six new book recommendations. I can personally recommend most of these titles as fantastic.

Lies We Tell Ourselves
Carry On
Under the Lights
More Than This
Not Otherwise Specified
About a Girl
Far From You

Of the books I hadn’t discovered on my own before this, I think I’ll be running headlong into I’ll Give You the Sun, by Jandy Nelson.

It’s only the 2nd of June and this is already the second blog post I’ve found that’s excited me, with The Love That Lives Here, written by Anna-Marie McLemore being the first. 

I think Pride Month may now be my favourite month of the year.

roachpatrol:iztarshi:Inspired by various tumblr posts.Humans quickly get a reputation among the...

roachpatrol:

iztarshi:

Inspired by various tumblr posts.

Humans quickly get a reputation among the interplanetry alliance and the reputation is this: when going somewhere dangerous, take a human.

Humans are tough. Humans can last days without food. Humans heal so fast they pierce holes in themselves or inject ink for fun. Humans will walk for days on broken bones in order to make it to safety. Humans will literally cut off bits of themselves if trapped by a disaster.

You would be amazed what humans will do to survive. Or to ensure the survival of others they feel responsible for.

That’s the other thing. Humans pack-bond, and they spill their pack-bonding instincts everywhere. Sure it’s weird when they talk sympathetically to broken spaceships or try to pet every lifeform that scans as non-toxic. It’s even a little weird that just existing in the same place as them for long enough seems to make them care about you. But if you’re hurt, if you’re trapped, if you need someone to fetch help?

You really want a human.

you know fantasy dragon soulbonding fic i want more of that where the humans are the dragons, like, we’re huge, we’re old, we’re scrappy as hell, and if you are small and cute enough we would be delighted to carry you around on our back 

robintalley:Today I am unbelievably thrilled to share the...

robintalley:

Today I am unbelievably thrilled to share the title and cover for my next contemporary book over on @yainterrobang!

Here is the teaser text for OUR OWN PRIVATE UNIVERSE, which will be out on

January 31, 2017, from @harlequinteen:

Fifteen-year-old Aki Hunter knows she’s bisexual, but up until now she’s only dated guys—and her best friend, Lori, is the only person she’s out to. When she and Lori set off on a four-week youth-group mission trip in a small Mexican town, it never crosses Aki’s mind that there might be anyone in the group she’d be interested in dating. But that all goes out the window when Aki meets Christa.

And look, you guys. I adore this cover. I talked over on YA Interrobang about exactly how much I love it.

I am seriously overwhelmed to be putting out this book. Because this book actually started with Twitter, and with Judy Blume.

One morning when I was sitting down to write, I glanced at my Twitter feed and saw that Judy Blume (whom, of course, I follow) had shared a recent review of her 1975 classic FOREVER. And I thought, as I had thought many times before, “Man, I freaking love FOREVER. I wish teen-me had gotten to read a version of FOREVER that was about queer girls.”

The next thing I knew, I’d abandoned the project I was supposed to be working on that day and opened a new Word document titled “FOREVER, But About Queer Girls.”

And Aki’s story was born.

OUR OWN PRIVATE UNIVERSE is the book I wrote for my younger self. It’s the book I wish I’d had when I was 13, and 15, and 17. It’s the book I want today’s versions of teen-me (who of course are all much cooler than the actual teen-me was) to have, so they can hide it under their beds or show it to their friends on the bus or talk about it with their parents.

This book, as I think the cover makes clear, is lighter than anything else I’ve written so far. But it’s still got a lot of serious themes. It’s about relationships of all kinds, and about learning how to figure out what’s important to you in your relationships with other people. And it’s about how crucial it is to be honest with yourself throughout that process.

And yeah, it’s also about sex. This is my version of FOREVER, after all. But minus Ralph.

I’m so grateful to Harlequin Teen for putting this book out into the world. And I’m particularly grateful to my editor T.S. Ferguson – who, when he first signed me on a book in which two girls holding hands was too great a scandal for words, may not have anticipated the sorts of scenes he’d wind up editing by the time this book came around (but who nonetheless edited them with great aplomb). 

And I’m grateful to you all for sticking with me as I continue to hop between genres. It’s really fun writing about queer teens getting up to all sorts of mischief in all sorts of times and places.

(Speaking of which, for anyone having trouble keeping track – such as myself (I blame the baby and her bizarre attitudes toward sleep) – yes, I do have another book that will be coming out before this one. It’s called AS I DESCENDED, and it’s an f/f retelling of MACBETH set at a haunted boarding school, and it’s out on September 6. It also has a very pretty cover, which you can see here.)

I will never not read books by @robintalley. This is also the same novelist who wrote What We Left Behind.

katy-l-wood:jamescarstairs:Shadowhunters Appreciation...

katy-l-wood:

jamescarstairs:

Shadowhunters Appreciation Week
Day 2: favorite friendship - M a g n u s  &  R a g n o r 

You’re here?
You didn’t think you’d get rid of me that easily, did you? (insp)

Can we take a second to talk about how important this was? That they showed a guy who is bisexual having an incredibly close, intimate relationship with another man with them just being friends? There was ZERO implication that they were ever more than very close friends. 

Click here to support LWS Funding Application by Snow McNally

Click here to support LWS Funding Application by Snow McNally:

saint-barbara:

almostincidental:

I’m trying to get money to make a deluxe version of my award-winning game, Little Witch Story! Help me out?

almostincidental has already made the game Little Witch Story, which you can play for free online. In order to develop the game further, they can apply for funding from Film Victoria, our government funding body (which also covers games), BUT!!! there is a $500 application fee! If you could kick in even a little bit, that will help pay artists, composers etc and strike a blow for queer/trans/poly representation. 

Photo

Less Than Three Press Group

Less Than Three Press Group:

Goodreads has been good enough to host a giveaway of my upcoming novella Prima Facie, which is also available for preorder on the Less Than Three website, but if you win it this way it’s FREE!

Bonus entries for the giveaway are available if you also add this book to your Goodreads shelves, here, whiiiiiiich I can see some people have already started to do. :D

Anxiety, Meds, and Words from the Horizon. (So to Speak.)

theartofnotwriting:

I keep writing this post, over and
over, feeling like I have to say everything. Today I’m trying to release myself
from that pressure. This post will not say everything. It will just say some
things.

I have this memory from Allegiant’s
release week. I hadn’t been sleeping or eating much due to the stress of the
new book coming out, and all that I was doing to give it a good start in the
world. I had taken a glance at Twitter before my plane to San Francisco took
off, and saw, for the first time, how angry and upset a lot of my readers were
at the way I chose to end the series. It may strike you as unbelievable that I
didn’t anticipate their reactions, but it’s true nonetheless– I did what I
thought (and still think) was right for the story, and that was all.

Let me be clear: I’m okay with
reactions, negative or otherwise. I am a grown woman, and a professional
author, and when people disagree with me, even angrily, that’s okay with me.
Readers are allowed, encouraged, to feel. To form their own opinions. To reject
and despise a story. To think some books are crap and other books aren’t. To
say so, in whatever GIF-y, sarcastic, exclamation point filled way they choose.
On a logical level, I believe this, would fight for it if I had to. But Anxious
Brain doesn’t get memos like that, doesn’t speak the language of logic. Anxious
Brain just feels, feels, feels.

Some of my readers were so upset
they posted death threats. (Hyperbolic or not, this is never okay. It’s the
Internet, so it’s hard to know if people are joking or if they’re really going
to try to hurt you.) I never thought I would upset people that much, ever, in
my entire life. Anxious Brain triggered a meltdown.

My plane took off, and I was so
anxious I was sobbing right there on the flight. The people next to me,
thankfully, didn’t say anything. I couldn’t distract myself. I counted down the
minutes until we landed, my sleeves disgustingly stained from wiping my nose.

My publicist and I went straight from
the airport to the bookstore for me to sign stock before the event that night.
The bookstore staff was friendly and kind, but I couldn’t be kind in return.
All I could do was put on my headphones and sign books. I cried the whole time.
Couldn’t stop. Some of my actual tears are in those Allegiants, San Francisco.
It’s funny to me now, though it wasn’t at the time.

After I got home from that tour, I
had the worst few days of my life. I was irrationally convinced– convinced–
that I was going to die of some life-threatening disease or another. I don’t remember,
now, which one. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the obsession
took over my waking and my sleeping. Most of the time I felt separate from my
own body. I felt a disconnected kind of terror, unrelated to anything in
particular, my heart pounding and my breaths short. I felt—and not for the
first time– like I was losing my sanity.

A little while after that, I went
back to therapy. Clearly I wasn’t handling things as well as I wished I was.

That was the “before” picture. This is the after:

The story of how a year of therapy
turned into finally trying medication isn’t really important right now. Someday
I’ll tell it. I was never the kind of person who was even open to the suggestion
of antidepressants– I thought that was a sign of weakness, something other
people needed, not me. I was strong. I would fight it on my own.

(Right?)

I’ll never forget what my therapist
said to me the day I finally raised the subject of brain chemicals to her. It
was pretty simple, just, “you don’t have to fight so hard.” Meaning: you don’t
have to go it alone, do it without help. You don’t have to try to be so strong.

I burst into tears. She had released
me, somehow, from the obligation of working so hard just to get out of
bed, and put on clothes, and interact with other people. (Most of the time I
had to take a nap the second I finished my shower, because the anxiety was so
exhausting. I had accepted this. I no longer realized, consciously, that it
wasn’t normal for an otherwise-healthy person to do that. In case you’re wondering…it’s not.)

Antidepressants, like most medications,
are not perfect. It’s not easy to “get it right.” The dosage, the prescription
itself. Every brain reacts differently. Everyone has different side effects
they can tolerate.

Antidepressant 1 made me into an
indestructible, emotionless robot– which was fun, for awhile, for someone so
used to being controlled by her emotions. But it wasn’t me, so I talked
to my doctor and switched to Antidepressant 1 + Supplementary Antidepressant 2.

1 + 2 made me anxious again. Back to
the beginning.

Antidepressant 3 was promising at
first. I still felt emotions, but I also felt exhausted.
Can’t-get-through-the-day-without-a-nap exhausted.
Can’t-exercise-because-you’re-too-sleepy exhausted.

Nope. Let’s try again.

Several months into my quest for the
right dosage and the right drug, I suddenly found that I was myself again.
Antidepressant 4, my little miracle. I was not my anxious self, but the person
I had been underneath. Neurotic, yes, because I have always been neurotic.
Capable of being nervous, and sad, and angry– capable of having negative
emotions, and feeling bad, and wishing my life was different. Wishing I was
different.

But also– ALSO! Capable of self
soothing. Capable of fighting back without draining my energy. Like a muscle
that you suddenly realize is strong after you’ve been working out for a few
weeks– like that first time you carry a bag of heavy groceries up a flight of
stairs and realize you’re not as out of breath as you used to be. I wasn’t a
robot, but I had energy. I could have a cup of tea and not feel so
jittery and shaky from the caffeine that I wanted to turn back time and
un-drink it. I could be kind to someone in a bookstore who recognized me and
asked me for a picture– without having a panic attack!

I could be okay. Happy. Sometimes
even calm.

Life is the same web of complicated
and difficult emotions that it’s always been. I don’t always wake up happy and
positive and ready to face the day. But I do wake up capable and hopeful.

I’d love to tell you something
comforting, something soothing, something to take away your fear of medication
or therapy or doctors or whatever it is that’s holding you back from doing
what’s best for your brain. I can’t tell you those things, because they
wouldn’t be true. It’s not easy, it’s not fun. It’s not great to break down and
sob because you think you’ll never find a medication that lets you feel like
yourself while still treating your anxiety. It’s not fun to drag yourself to
therapy every week even though you hate the hard, but true things your
therapist is telling you about the way you’re thinking and feeling. It’s not
awesome to explain and re-explain how mental illness works to people who have
never experienced it.

There will be days when, defeated,
you dust off your old bottle of Klonipin (doctor prescribed) because even the
antidepressants just aren’t enough anymore.

There will be days when, hopeless,
you curl up on the couch and wonder if you will ever feel okay again, even for
a couple minutes at a time.

But there is something on the
horizon, a glimmer of something else,
the hope of hey, I can handle this, even though it’s hard! I am standing
there now, and looking back at where I’ve been, so I can tell you. I can tell
you that hey, I can handle this, even though it’s hard! is worth
fighting for. It’s worth that awful, terrifying call to the mental health clinic,
the one you rehearse for, even the one you ask your mom to make for you. It’s
worth every hour of bickering with your therapist because anxiety makes you a
stubborn asshole. It’s worth every little green-or-blue pill you swallow, while
under the supervision of a medical doctor, in the dim hope that you will one
day feel just a tiny bit better than before.

It is worth it to try. And to
try again. To take care of your brain.

I am wildly, madly, scorchingly
happy to be in this place. I am so grateful for my therapist saying “you don’t
have to fight so hard.” I am so proud of Past Veronica for dragging herself–
sometimes thirty minutes late, because it was that hard to leave the
house!– to therapy every week. For years.

If you have done even a single
thing– told a friend, asked for help, called a doctor, tried a medicine– to
take care of your brain, I am so proud of you, too. One little step at a time,
guys.

If you haven’t done those things, if
you can’t, if it’s too goddamn hard, that doesn’t mean you suck. It doesn’t
mean anything other than you just can’t right now. But hear this, just in case.
Just in case it’s the thing you need:

It’s worth it.

You don’t have to be so strong. You
don’t have to fight so hard.

<3,

V