B.R. Sanders's Blog, page 7

The Wake of 11/8/2016

Our president-elect is Donald Trump, and that is a terrifying thing.

It’s terrifying for a lot of reasons. It’s terrifying because in the same election that voted him into office, we as a country kept the republicans in control of the Senate, thereby empowering him to make a great deal of policy changes. Should Clinton have been elected, she would have been hamstrung–but Trump is set free.

It’s terrifying because for so many of us it confirms what we already knew about the county and the world we live in. That we are hated. That we are wished away. That those in power and those with privilege will hold onto it tightly, viciously, with every scrap of strength they have.

It’s terrifying because as much as Donald Trump was treated as a joke by the left and by commentators this was a very real possibility and actually quite predictable. After eight years of a Black president, what do we as a country do? We repeal the Voting Rights Act. This is what an election looks like when Black voters are once again systemically disenfranchised. In a parallel universe, where the VRA is still in place, I bet Clinton won. We pushed ourselves into the darkest timeline. Dear fellow white people: this is a bed of our own making, even if we did vote for Clinton in one-offs.

The truth is that I voted for Clinton, but I wasn’t happy about it. My choice was between a man who outright villified me because I am queer and trans and disabled or a women who codes those various hates in different kinds of language, who hides them, who smooths off the rough edges. I disliked Clinton, but I was terrified of Trump. Clinton could, at least, stymie the republican controlled Senate, maybe?

Ultimately the election didn’t even come down to actual policy. The only issues on the table were the supposed estrangement of white men from politics (which is just bald-faced racism) and the fact that Hilary is a woman. Really, it came down to the backlash against the fact that our previous president is Black and one of the nominees is a woman. White people in this country revolted–went out of their way to rig an election, to make sure that they were the ones voting, and went out of their way to vote in a man who it seems like will continue to keep white supremacy front and center. Tell me again how we live in a post-racial society.

It is a struggle to know how to live now with all of our skeletons spilling out of the closet. at FiveThirtyEight.com, Nate Silver wrote:

2:10AM:

Something to remember: Whatever your feelings about the state of the country right now, it’s fundamentally not that different a place whether the final call is that Clinton has narrowly won or narrowly lost. Add just 1 percent to Clinton’s vote share and take 1 percent away from Trump’s, and she would have won Florida and Pennsylvania, therefore would probably have been on her way to a narrow Electoral College victory.

And that’s the most horrifying part. I think he is trying to write something comforting here, but it’s actually horrifying. Yes. America is not fundamentally different depending on whichever candidate won. We are a deeply, horribly divided country filled with bile and hate for ourselves.

This is not the fault of those who cannot or would not vote. This is not the fault of those who voted third party. This is the fault of those who voted for Trump–the fault of millions and millions of people if every single state who voted for Trump. Do not place the blame anywhere but squarely at their feet, and the feet of those, like the Supreme Court who repealed the VRA, who helped enable this shit show.

If you, like me, are reeling today, show yourself kindness. Do what you need to survive. Survival is payback. Survival is revolutionary.

 

 

Nano Update #2

Target: 30,000 words

Words written: 4,717

Words left to go: 25,283

Update from this weekend! The goal was to get back on track. I didn’t quite make it on track, but I did make a decent amount of progress! I cracked 1000 words on both Saturday and Sunday, so that is definitely not nothing.

Plot-wise I am in Chapter 3, and some random character has just burst onto the scene. I don’t know if this guy is sticking around for the long haul, or if he’s just in it for a scene, but he’s one of those characters that shows up more or less fully formed and just takes over the scene.

NaNo 2016 Update #1

Target: 30,000 words

Words written: 2,234

Words left to go: 27,766

The Ballad of Bettie Frass is happening, but it’s happening slowly. I’m already off track–I should have 4,000 words done by now. I wrote every day so far, but my highest word count was 876. I’m hoping to put in some extra writing time today and tomorrow to get closer to on track again.

I am not actually surprised about this. Frankly, I’m just really happy I’ve written consistently four days in a row, even if it’s only been a couple hundred words here and there. I haven’t consistently written since I broke my ankle back in February. Between being laid up with that, where my days had no routine, to being totally overwhelmed by my old job, I’ve had no balance in my life, and thus no energy or space for writing. But I have two (mostly) functioning ankles now, and a job that allows for work/life balance, and NaNo is the perfect time to set up some sustainable writing routines.

I’ve found a great coffee shop for morning writing. Good coffee, good pastries, good tables. It closes at 5pm, though, so it’s not doable for after work writing. But! There is a Starbucks (not great coffee) in the lobby of a building not far from where I work that stays open much later and has good squishy chairs. So I think I have a good place for afternoon writing, too. Check and check.

I can’t write on the bus anymore. My commute changed, and now I take the express buses, and they are often so full it’s standing room only. Not writing compatible, hence the need to show up very early and find An Ideal Writing Spot or stay late and hunker down in A Different Acceptable Writing Spot. I have found that I can’t write at work, because if I am work I will just…keep working. The change of location is key for me to actually switch to writing and away from doing other things. During the week, my time at home is so limited that when I’m home I want to be present and not sequester myself away. During the weekends, it’s a lot easier to lock myself in my room for a couple of hours a day, write, and then clue back into my bustling family life.

The story for Bettie Frass is really just getting started. A lot of what I’ve been doing–and why I’ve written so little so far–has been about stretching atrophied writing muscles. Getting back into the swing of things again. Remembering how and when I work best. I think next week will cover more ground.

Are you all doing NaNo this year? What are you working on? How is it going?

 

NaNo 2016 – It’s Happening

Hey friends!

I am all in for NaNo 2016.

So, I just started a new job, one with remarkably more work/life balance, which means remarkably more time for writing. This entire year has basically been a writing drought from the time I shattered my leg waaaaay back in February until, hopefully, now. I’ve managed to eke out two shorts and keep ARIAH on the market, but that’s been it for ten whole months. Typically I’ve written entire novels in this span of time. It’s been…unpleasant.

But I think life is turning around now, and not a moment too soon. Patreon supporters at the $5 and up level are promised a novella by the end of the calendar year, and I’ve had one rattling around in my brain for a very long time.

I’m not shooting for the whole 50k words–I’m out of writing shape, and this is a novella anyway. So winning for me will be a cool 30,000. The novella is tentatively titled The Ballad of Bettie Frass. Here’s a short description:

Bettie Frass is a legend and a cipher. Her exploits are legendary, but who was she, and how did she manage to do what she did–and how did she disappear?

In any case, I’ll be posting about my progress here (and my various minor successes and tribulations along the way). And if you want to follow along with me on the Nano site, or if you want to be my ~official writing buddy~, you can check that out here.

Worldbuilding Through Sex/Love/Romance

Hi all!

I had the honor of leading a worldbuilding workshop at Sirens 2016. I love Sirens – I was thrilled to attend again this year*, and I encourage folks to attend if they have the opportunity. I have found it to be a warm and welcoming experience.

So! Worldbuilding! I never tire of talking about it! The theme this year was Lovers, and so we talked in the workshop about how you can really enter worldbuilding through any anchor point. Why not use lovers as an anchor point? Why not use sex, sexuality, gender, constructions of romance as a way to begin worldbuilding?

Essentially, what we did in the workshop (which you can see in the above slideshow) was establish a general framework for worldbuilding, then talk about ways to breakdown and think about sex and sexuality, then put the two pieces together.

I should say here that none of this is prescriptive. That is, the elements of the worldbuilding framework that work for me are presented in a particular order, but this is not intended to be a suggestion that this work happens in a linear fashion. Perhaps you start in a different place than I do, or you revisit one element, and then need to revise another section. That’s fine! For me, I know my worldbuilding is solid when I have all the pieces in place, no matter what order I get to them.

For reference, here are the materials, which are free to use:

slideshow
worksheet

And also for reference, here is a post about last year’s Sirens worldbuilding workshop.

*Well, half-attend. I didn’t get to go to much of it, as I was hella sick this year. But! I still had a wonderful time!

How To Republish Your Own Dang Book

Or: How To Rise Like A Phoenix From So Many Ashes

Seriously, y’all.

Now that the Ariah relaunch has happened, I thought it might be cool to walk you through what that looked like, exactly, in case any of you out there need similar info/skills in the future times.

What Happened When I Heard My Press Was Going Under

Oh, you know. Irritation. Resignation. Worry. But it’s the new normal, right? You can’t let yourself dwell on it too much. I got the rights reversion language from them, and filed it away. Ariah (and the other books I had under contract with them) was mine again.

And that felt a bit like freedom, honestly. Terrifying, exhilarating freedom.

Deciding What To Do Next

I went into that a little here. The options were pretty clear-cut:

find a press willing to reprint Ariah
create a press and reprint Ariah
self-publish Ariah

Ultimately, I went with option 3, for now, because of timing and resources. Judging by word of mouth and some of the few stats I have at my disposal, there is some momentum and demand for Ariah out there currently. I was afraid if the book disappeared altogether that the word of mouth would dry up, the momentum would turn to stillness, and Ariah would entirely lose the audience its found. It felt, and still feels, important to keep the book out there. It is as entirely legitimate as it will ever be–publishing through a press is not going to make that more or less true–and the text has already been copy edited.

Ariah’s Second Edition – Nuts And Bolts

Ok, with that decision made, I started sketching out tasks to make it happen:

Cover – I have always loved the cover art the press secured for Ariah, so when they offered to let me purchase it, I jumped at the chance. Done.
Redo Digital File – I took the epub file the press gave me for promotion purposes when the book initially launched, and plopped it into Sigil. Sigil is a free program that I use to edit and manipulate epub files until they are *exactly* how I want them.

Change Front and Back Matter – I needed to make changes, definitely, to the copyright page. This is a second edition, since the publisher has changed. I took out some of the language my press had in the copyright page and added some other language. I reconfigured the Table of Contents. I removed some of the back matter and added other back matter, and made the links live.
Tweak Book Design – In Sigil, I tweaked some of the chapter titles and section headings to be more my aesthetic.
Upload to Kindle – When the Sigil file was done, I uploaded it to a different program, Calibre. In calibre, you can add a cover image. You can also convert the epub to other formats (like mobi). I took the newly created mobi file and uploaded it to Kindle. Bam: that’s your ebook.


Redo Print File – Also in Calibre, I converted the epub to a rtf file. I made whatever book design choices I wanted in Word–important note: you have to set paper size to 6×9 and set mirror margins to match the default CreateSpace size. I found this part to be extremely, weirdly, super fun. Then, I exported the word doc as a PDF, which I uploaded to CreateSpace.

Upload to CreateSpace – You’ll need to go through CreateSpace’s entire finicky checklist, and you’ll need to go through the cover design process there. This was…less fun, but very thorough. Once it’s all done, and reviewed, then you have a print-on-demand paperback!


Update Amazon Author Page – Go to AuthorCentral and add the new versions of the ebook and paperback to your bibliography. I had to add all the extra shizz to their pages (editorial reviews, about the author, etc).

I couldn’t get Amazon to link the new editions to the old editions, so the current reviews are trapped forever on the old edition’s page. *sad trombone*

although I have found a couple of ways to inquire about this (check out this and this if you wind up with similar issues). So hopefully this will be resolved soon!




Update Goodreads – Add the new ebook and paperback as new editions to your book’s goodreads page. If you do this, then your reviews from the old editions will carry over like magic.

If you run into trouble with that, the Goodreads librarian group is full of angels.

What’s Next?

The big question is What To Do With Those Other Books Zharmae Had Under Contract. I’ve shopped them around a little, but not much. But honestly, I don’t really know what’s next.

I do know it will work out. And I’ll be around. And it’ll be great! Stay tuned.

ARIAH has relaunched!

In the wake of Zharmae’s closing, I was faced with a choice:

take my book and go quietly into the night, shopping it around as a possible reprint
relaunch it myself immediately

I’ve decided to do both things. I’ve put a couple of feelers out to people who might be interested in reprinting Ariah–people with resources and reach I don’t have alone–but in the meantime, this little book has grown legs!

There are readers who would like to buy it in the interim, in both ebook and paperbook formats, and it feels not super cool to keep Ariah out of circulation just because when it takes not a terrible amount of effort to put it back in circulation.

So: Ariah is available, as a second edition, via Amazon in both print and digital formats. One day there might be yet a third edition, if any of those feelers pan out, but maybe not, so what is there to lose really?

Psst – there is a giveaway happening right now through my newsletter. You can sign up for the newsletter mailing list here, if you haven’t already, and enter the giveaway here.

2nd Edition Ebook | 2nd Edition Print

The second edition has no story or grammatical changes in the text compared to the first edition. Really, the only change is that the first edition was published by Zharmae, and this edition is published by me, and thus they have different ISBNs. I did take the opportunity to make some slight differences to layout and book design, but again, the book does not have any additional content, so if you already have a copy of Ariah, I can’t really tell you in good conscience to pick up a copy of the second edition (unless you’re like OMG I MUST SUPPORT B IN EVERYTHING THEY DO in which case…thank you! You’re very sweet and encouraging!!).

❤

B

Book Review: ELYSIUM by Jennifer Marie Brissett

Goodreads | Amazon

Notes on Diversity:

Generally excellent diverse sci-fi book. All three major characters are people of color. All three are portrayed, in places, as queer. There are definite scenes/sections that tackle issues of disability.

But. The book, I think, really really fails with trans issues (see below).

Review:

There is Adrianne and Antoine. Or Adrian and Atoinette. Or Adrianne and Antoinette. Or Adrian and Antoine. Anyway, there are two, and they love each other, but there is a trauma, and it tears them apart. Because no matter how much you love someone, sometimes there are forces in life that can still rip you apart. Sometimes the two are lovers. Sometimes they are siblings. Sometimes one is a parent, and the other is a child. But always, always, there is a deep and abiding love, and always, always, there is a horrible loss.

This is a strange little book, and I went into it completely uninformed*. I am finding it, honestly, hard to review it.

Brissett is a writer of scope and specificity, both, which I love. The narrative spins and twists back on itself, coiling and expanding in turns. It starts in a perfectly normal setting, realist, and then adds layer upon layer of weird. The first bit of weird is that in the next scene, the characters who were heterosexual lovers are now gay men. Later, the genders change once more (now they are again a heterosexual couple) but the setting shifts–Adrianne is a sort-of vestal virgin in Roman-esque future world. There is a war. Antoine is a soldier. The narrative shifts again. Wings are involved. The narrative shifts again: an alien invasion.

Throughout, there is a core to Adrianne/Adrian’s character and to Antoine/Atoinette’s character–or, perhaps more precisely, a chain of love between them–that never shifts. It evolves, they evolve, and sometimes they revert, but that fact of their relationship never changes even as it is clear something key is disintegrating around them and breaking down.

This is a lovely book. But something happened about halfway through that made me step away from it and claim some distance.

sad zoidberg is sad about the spoilers below

*****SPOILERS*****

There is a third character, Hector/Helen, who features as a sometimes friend and sometimes leg of a love triangle. In one of the twists of the narrative, Adrianne winds up institutionalized. At the same mental institution is Helen, apparently institutionalized because she is a trans woman. But in the text, she is consistently referred to as Hector, and referred to using male pronouns. They become friends, and later Helen dies a heroic death to save Adrian (their gender flips again) because he is the only who accepts her for who she is (even though Adrianne/Adrian, too, has been referring to her as ‘he’ and ‘Hector’ in the unspoken elements of the text.).

This is…this is a particular issue of mine. I dislike it when trans people are thrown to the wolves to make cis people heroic and accepting. And I dislike it even more when their (our) transness is made hypervisible by breaking the consonance of how they (we) are referred to in dialogue and how they (we) are referred to in narration. Having a character call Helen by the name she prefers, but think of her as Hector, is a type of misgendering. It is a qualification and a marker of difference.

This is a minor part of the story, that is a fact. But it so disturbed and disappointed me that I had to leave the rest of the book untouched for over a week. As a trans reader, I personally felt misgendered and ignored and small just by reading this treatment of a trans character.

*****END SPOILERS*****

And that is a shame, because this book is really good. Especially the ending. I still can’t shake that piece above, but pushing past it really got to the good stuff. The book has heart, and the book has philosophy. The way the pieces of the book fit together, the fluidity of Brissett’s writing, it’s all a wonder to behold. Except for that. But that, while a small piece of the text, was a huge thing for me as a reader.

I just wish the book didn’t also make me feel like I was a set piece. So, how the hell do you rate a book where you are pretty sure you would have loved it if it hadn’t been for that one part that made you feel like you were a tool for cis people? I guess…I guess you split the difference.

*This is, actually, my preferred way to read things. I either want no information about a book except a rec to read it, or I want to be spoiled completely. I like to either let the story unfold with no expectations, or I like to let it unfold knowing what’s going to happen and able to watch for the seams.

Book Review: THERE ONCE LIVED A GIRL WHO SEDUCED HER SISTER’S HUSBAND, AND HE HANGED HIMSELF by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

Goodreads | Amazon

Notes on Diversity:

Petrushevskaya’s stories are not diverse on the surface. It’s not explicit, but I read most of the characters as white. The stories–love stories, the cover claims–appeared to be hetero in nature.

The bulk of these love stories are focused on women, and what is remarkable about these stories is the great breadth of Russian femininity* that Petrushevskaya tracks through her stories. The stories are pulled from the full spread of her writing career, and across them we have old heroines and very young heroines and heroines settling into middle age. We have hopeful and dour heroines. Beautiful, but mostly homely heroines. Bright and slow heroines. Heroines of virtually every description.

And, also specific to Russia, we have heroines that live in Soviet Russia and heroines that live in a Russia which has once again begun to flirt with capitalism. We see, through Petrushevskaya’s eyes, the great and remarkable changes that Russian society went through while she lived, and how great (or small) an impact those changes made on the daily lives of its citizens.

Review:

Petrushevskaya has a light hand with narration and a uncanny, unflinching eye for vicious detail. These are love stories, but they are horror stories, too. These are stories, almost uniformly, about how completely random and obliterating and destructive love can be. She is a sly, deadpan writer, and the stories are like those told by your aunt who’s seen too much and who is always slightly drunk at holiday dinners, but who is charismatic and fascinating anyway.

The only real fault I have with the collection is repetition. Sixteen stories is a lot to read in one go, especially when the themes are so consistent and similar. I wish the collection had been shorter, that the ten best and brightest had been chosen. But, then again, every anthology is a bit of a shot in the dark, yes? My top ten are probably not your top ten.

Speaking of, stand-outs (for me, anyway) were “Two Deities”, “Tamara’s Baby”, “A Happy Ending,” and especially “Milgrom”.

*I would not venture to say that she is somehow speaking to all of womanhood or across all women’s experience. That is certainly not true. But she does seem to speak to a great swath of Russian women’s experience (I would think–I am not Russian).

Announcement: I’ll be presenting at Sirens Conference again this year!

The full 2016 Sirens Con schedule is here!

I’ll be taking a much-needed break from my day job to attend the whole conference, which is right in my backyard here in Denver, and the pre-conference Sirens Studio events. So, if you’re around for the conference or the Sirens Studio, I’d love to see you! Drop me a line, ok?

Back to my presentation. I am presenting a worlbuilding workshop on Friday, October 21st at 4pm. Here’s the blurb:

What counts as sex? What counts as love? Who is allowed to do what to whom and why? What happens when rules are broken? When you are worldbuilding, these questions can become murky and complicated very quickly. In this workshop, we will explore how using themes of romance, sex, love, queerness, and marriage can deeply inform worldbuilding in speculative fiction.

Hope to see you there, fellow worldbuilding nerds!