Sable Aradia's Blog, page 67
July 8, 2017
Swimming Against the Tide
An Important Memory
As you can probably imagine, being geeky and likely neurodivergent, I was bullied a lot in school. In some cases people treated me very badly, and I have some anxiety issues and PTSD around that to this day. I don’t tell you that because I want sympathy; I tell you that so that you can appreciate the weight of making the choices that I did.
My best friends in early elementary school were people who didn’t quite fit in like me. By the time that intermediate grades rolled around, one had moved and the other was avoiding me because, with the onset of adolescence, she had become the pretty friend and I was an early-blooming ugly duckling, with full-fledged pizza face at ten and eleven, so it was easier for her to not be associated with me, since she had a chance to make it with the popular people and I did not.
I spent a lot of time lonely. This is when I discovered writing, so I suppose I should thank them all, really. But imagine my excitement when the popular group decided they wanted me to be a part of them! I wouldn’t be alone anymore!
However, I quickly discovered that what they wanted me for was to mastermind pranks a la the MacDonald Hall books. I had a reputation for being smart, and they decided they wanted to capitalize on that.
I was traditionally a “good girl” until my late teens when I finally blew up into full rebellion, but that was still years away. I didn’t mind playing harmless pranks though. We got caught once with something that turned out to be embarrassing for another student, however, and I was filled with remorse. I had often enough been the recipient of humiliating “pranks” and I was mortified that I might have done this to someone else. (I can’t watch embarrassment comedies to this day.) I confessed and apologized immediately.
In the meantime, I was also learning that to be part of the “popular” group, you had to do what the leaders of the group thought was cool to do. They directed everything from what clothes we wore to what we ate for recess.
They were angry that I’d confessed, and they wanted me to make some big changes to the way I dressed and spoke. I went along with it for a while, but one day they went too far. They tried to tell me what to *think*. They tried to tell me that I should like a movie because they thought it was good, and I shouldn’t like a movie because they didn’t.
I was done. I told them I didn’t want any part of their army of robots (that’s a quote). They said that if I wasn’t going to do it, I couldn’t be part of their group anymore. I said, “See ya.”
I didn’t have another close friend until a new girl moved to town two grades later. I guess it gave me a lot of time to perfect my writing!
I used to wish, and hard, that I could just be whatever everyone else seemed to want me to be. I wished that I was “normal” — whatever that is. It wasn’t until much later that I discovered that as much as you do still get shit in your life when you swim against the current — especially from people who have some kind of authority over you, especially if that authority is limited — you also beat a path for others who are different to follow you. Your courage gives others courage.
Many years later, most of my childhood bullies have since made a point of offering me a personal apology. It doesn’t undo what they did, nor how it made me feel. To this day I have difficulty making and trusting close friends. But it also made me strong. And I have also had people since come up to thank me for standing up to the bullies because it gave them the courage to do so.
If there’s one good thing about the internet, it teaches you that whatever your weirdness, there are millions of others who share it! Today, for example, I’m at The Penti-Con, which is a nerdtacular comic-con. A whole event just for geeks like me!
No matter how alone you think you are in your life, you never are.
July 7, 2017
Indie Author Pricing: POD Books
Ebook versus Print Book publishing strategy.
The last time I wrote about book pricing, I focused on my ebook strategy. Now I’d like to supplement that with the addition of paperbacks.
A little background for you.
When I first decided to self-publish (Almost) Average Anthology, it was an experiment of sorts. So many people were publishing their own work and it seemed easy. Never having tried it before, I figured I’d give it a shot. I had four novels written but didn’t think I could edit them well enough to release them. However, I did have a nice back catalog of flash fiction stories I felt I could edit myself and release them as a book. I used this opportunity to find out what I could do on my own with little to no cost.
The process went smooth enough. But then days after the release of my ebook, a friend of mine said he’d…
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A Change in World View
I have always tried to grasp why it is that women are regarded as somehow lesser than men in our culture. It never made any sense to me. Even now, some people seem to feel it’s okay to disregard my opinion on everything from science to politics to warfare, simply because I was born with a different set of plumbing. Men and women both feel comfortable with patronizing me in ways they do not seem to dare to do with my male peers.
As a result I struggled with my gender identity. Was I perhaps, more of a boy than a girl? Surely something must have gone wrong, since I loathed dresses as physically restrictive, wanted to play hockey and join Cub Scouts rather than ringette and Girl Guides (not an option when I was of an age to do so), and would rather win the bread than raise the babies.
In my young womanhood I participated in Women’s Spirituality groups trying to find an answer. I came to accept myself as a girl, but decided that the rest of the world was f*cked up. And I believed the answer they gave me because it was the only thing that made sense; the double-standards were about restricting women’s sexuality and thus their fertility. Because motherhood is a provable fact, while fatherhood is an opinion. At least, without DNA testing.
But my world-view changed again as a result of long conversations with my partner. I tend to pair up with strong men and women, not because I’m looking for an alpha to dominate me (sorry, men’s rights guys, you are wrong) but because I have always been a very strong person and I do not want to be with someone I have to carry; I want to be with someone who will be my partner. I have broken people in my relationships. I don’t mean to, and I don’t like it.
In the course of these discussions, my partner brought up examples of cultures in which the traditional roles of dominance based on gender were different. His theory was that it was based on economics.
In order to assure the control of property, society sets up “rules” that delineate haves and have-nots. They are arbitrary and serve to protect whatever the existing power structure is — in our case, traditional patriarchy; which, by the way, is a system where only rich older men benefit, and everyone, even younger men, lose.
This similarly creates a lot of the issues of intersectionality we currently see in the world, such as racism, sexism, classism, ableism, and transphobia. The haves want to keep what they’ve got. It’s why white women are often racist in their feminism, and I think it’s probably why we have gay Republicans. It’s why it’s the grandmothers who force sexist abuses on their granddaughters in their respective cultures, covering everything from why your mother-in-law always glares at you when the house is messy even when you work full-time and your husband doesn’t, to female circumcision. They have to believe that what they’ve been taught to accept is proper behaviour for women, or everything they have suffered will have been for nothing.
It’s why women only call women of a different social class than themselves a “slut.” (There are studies. Look it up.)
Anything that challenges the carefully delineated lines that separate the haves and the have-nots is a specific target for abuse and wrath. It’s why cultures tend to frown on interracial marriages and why those who do not fit the gender binary are the recipients of so much abuse. It’s why there was such opposition to gay marriage. And ultimately, it’s why there is a constant, self-enforcing double standard regarding female sexuality, even in the age of the Pill.
Applying Occam’s Razor, I came to realize that this made much more sense than theories of assured genetic heritage. So now, while I work to fight against all inequalities, I am especially concerned with economic inequality.
The wealthy controllers who own everything have managed to convince us all that if we are poor, we must deserve it. We are lazy, we don’t work hard enough, we have a defect of character; something. And we believe it because either we don’t want to admit that being poor could happen to us and it’s all a matter of luck, or because we would rather believe that *we are at fault* than believing that the deck is stacked against us. Because that, at least, gives us hope.
But it’s not true. It’s not any more true than eating all the right foods or being a good person will save you from Death. Death is coming for all of us, and mostly it’s entirely outside of our control, and nothing can be done about it other than to use your wits and do the best to maximize what the gods gave you.
I have come to believe, as a result of debate and discussion, that only by combating on all of the fronts at once can we change this. Only by confronting intersectional issues and the social attitudes that form them while we are confronting the stacked decks that create economic inequality, can we achieve the goal of the best quality of life for the most people.
Maybe you don’t agree with me. That’s okay. Let’s have a debate about it. Give me your logical reasons. Don’t waste my time by insulting me or calling me stupid or ignorant. Prove me wrong with intelligent debate.
People have done so before.
PS: I have also changed my view of gender, and I would now describe myself as “demi-gender”; mostly I’m a girl, but sometimes, parts of me are not. But that’s another story.
Tell me about a time when a good debate or reasoned discussion made you change your world view!
July 5, 2017
30 Days 30 Authors Video Playlist
I’ll be adding to this playlist as the month goes on, but you can watch the first few videos here! Follow my challenge on my Facebook author page!
July 4, 2017
Before Wonder Woman
The original intent of the article isn’t clear at first, but it is actually a look at why Hollywood desperately needed Wonder Woman, and how far we’ve actually come.
This year’s Wonder Woman is not Hollywood’s first attempt at showcasing a powerful leading female. Early film makers hinted at and teased audiences with portrayals of strong women.
The first Alice in Wonderland was released in 1903. The 1939 The Wizard of Oz is a well beloved musical film story about Dorothy’s struggles to return home.
The 1950s saw many exploitative representations of powerful women, including Cat-Women of the Moon (1953), Fire Maidens from Outer Space (1956), Queen of Outer Space (1958), The Wasp Woman (1959), The Leech Woman (1960), and Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968).
In the 1968 film, The Lion in Winter, Henry II of England’s wife and adversary, Eleanor of Aquitaine, is the main female character. She became, through inheritance, marriage, and her own military actions one of the most powerful women in western Europe in the 12th century. She led armies and…
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July 3, 2017
The Road to Fantasy is Paved with Facts
Good advice for fantasy writers!
(This is the first of four “themed” posts about research for fantasy novelists.)
I don’t really give “Writing Advice”.
Oh, sure – I have my opinions, and since I’ve managed to produce two novels and a memoir, I have just enough experience and success to think that, perhaps, I do know what I’m doing when I write.
At least, I know what works for me, and being older and crabbier than I was when the first novel got past the first draft, I occasionally do hop onto the soap-box and declaim about stuff writers might want to stop doing, because it’s annoying to read that shit.
But the one thing I have come to realize that what I do know something about is research.
(You would think that having an MA in archaeology from a highly renowned institution, and having some research published and used, I would have known this…
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Orwell vs Huxley vs Zamyatin
#30days30authors
In a city of glass, where people who are just Numbers living in glass-brick houses, and everyone’s daily routine is determined by the Tables of the Hours set down by the Well-Doer, one particular Number, D-503, is developing a dangerous affliction. He is nurturing a soul. This could put his life and that of his loved ones in mortal danger, because in this future One State, where logic rules, sex is rationed and love banned, a budding soul is an indication of developing individuality and separateness. But the state believes: “nobody is ‘one,’ but ‘one of’. We are so alike…”
Read the full article at Scroll.in.
July 2, 2017
The Map of Space Opera Mythology
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#30days30authors
What else would you add to this map?
July 1, 2017
30 Days, 30 Authors
#30days30authors
Over the next 30 Days, I will be participating in a challenge! 30 authors have joined forces to tell our readers a bit more about ourselves and each other. You’ll find different posts about different subjects here (not all spam about my books, don’t worry!) and on all my social media accounts (see the link in the sidebar). As part of this process, I’ll be going live for at least a few minutes every day on my Facebook author page, though the time of day will vary.
Some of it is going to be a bit outside my comfort zone, in that I’ll be sharing more personal info online than I’m used to sharing. I tend to be a very private person so this is going to take some work from me.
Within that group, I’m working within a smaller group of half a dozen authors (all of us speculative fiction writers of some variety). We’re Group A, so naturally we’re calling ourselves The A Team, and you’ll probably see a lot of posts about The A Team over the course of the next 30 days!
Today I’m supposed to post a FB post about a) something I love and why, b) my Work in Progress, and c) what I’ve learned about this whole process. Seems odd, but it’s a list of 30 days of activities and I was, of course, the last one on the list, so I start with the Day 30 activities. So I’ll post the other two directly on my page, but perhaps instead of posting about what I’ve learned, I’ll post about what I hope to learn:
I am looking to network with other writers in similar fields to my own and I hope to learn better ways to do that. I hope to learn more about effective use of social media, and about navigating the internet in general. Most importantly, I am hoping to find a better way to connect with my readers than throwing internet spam into the void.
I’m going to be spending a lot of time online, so this is a good time to interact with me and ask me questions or make suggestions. What would you like to see over the course of the month? Is there a particular project I’m doing that you’d like to hear more about? Let me know in the comments!
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June 30, 2017
Appearing in SciFan Magazine for July!
[image error]I’m excited to announce that an excerpt of Showdown (Wyrd West Chronicles #1) will be appearing in July’s issue of SciFan Magazine, a magazine that publishes strictly science fantasy and LitRPG. And next month, they’ll be publishing Survivor, a story in the Toy Soldier Saga! Check it out!
Want to get all of my work first, plus sneak previews no one else gets? Support my Patreon!
