Cole McCade's Blog

Take a seat. Take several. We’re gonna chat.

Welp. I guess I’m getting this out of the way so I can get some goddamned sleep, and because I am not going to let a bunch of vindictive, conspiracy-peddling arseholes frame my life by their terms or shape the narrative around who I am.

You are going to sit down, and you are going to listen, because I have had enough of this shite.

Did you think you were going to somehow shame me, oust me, turn me into the next Santino, and send me running into the night just like him?

Like hell.

Because I’m not Santino.

And I have been silent and passive about your shitty little crusade long enough.

My name is Adrien-Luc Sanders, and congratulations, arseholes. You just deadnamed and misgendered a closeted trans man, maneuvered him into a position to forcibly and preemptively publicly out himself, and placed him at risk in a community that isn’t safe for trans folk, when his only crime against you was writing a book you didn’t like.

Take a seat. Take several seats. Have your “oh shite” moment. Work through your denials, your claims it’s just a ploy to avoid being labeled a catfish, your mumbles that you didn’t mean it, you didn’t realize. And then remember the only reason you were able to find my deadname is because legal name changes are a matter of public record, and I sure as fuck didn’t change mine or spend years on testosterone just so one day I could stand here and have you invalidate the life I have built trying to be right in my skin since I was eighteen and even knew what trans was.

You are going to fucking listen today.

And don’t bother deleting. I screencapped your shite. And this little shite icing on the turd cake:

That DM is a threat.

That, my friends, is an account that used to belong to my ex-spouse. My abusive ex-spouse, but that’s not my ex-spouse running it. They deleted it over a year ago for a new handle and more professional rebrand; the new iteration of the account was created in September 2018 (and not by my ex–they’re actually pretty pissed someone is impersonating them, and I believe them for once; they’re mad enough to want to turn this over to a friend in the FBI). This account is most likely run by one of the Nasty Birds; it fits their modus operandum of claiming people’s deleted accounts and using those accounts to target them. These little shite farmers sussed out my ex, sussed out their old account, recreated the account with the same name, user name, and location, followed my ex’s new account and a former manager at a past employer (?????? why, even, he quit before I did, it makes no sense, not to mention my employers have always known I was trans so…what there), went around pointedly liking things on both my Xen/Cole account and my old Adrien twitter, and then used that identity to message me so they could impersonate my abuser while deadnaming me.

I suppose in an attempt at intimidation, or just for a little sadistic fun trying to make me afraid of what was coming. I don’t know. I guess they’ve locked the account so I won’t be able to see while they build up to their big reveal, etc.–though I saw enough before they locked it to know they’re being vile. Maybe they thought I was leading a double life as my ex’s wife…? When, um, no? I don’t know if my ex ever even knew my deadname; it’s been a while so I don’t remember if I ever told them when it just wasn’t relevant, though I might’ve since it was on joint leases for a while since I couldn’t afford my legal name change until pro bono help from TLDEF in 2015. I was always their boyfriend/husband in real life. (As far as their gender–that’s complicated, and also an attempt to keep a line of separation between our past histories so me writing erotic books would be less likely to cross paths with their public social media presence and reputation as a professional, done with their full knowledge.)

But just when I thought you little fucks couldn’t sink any lower, you go full TERF and launch into the transphobic violence.

But you were just happy to be outing another supposed “catfish,” right?

I mean, I don’t know why I’m surprised when you’ve shown an utter willingness to be racist, ableist, queerphobic fucks specifically targeting multiple mentally ill and disabled queer POC authors when outright lying didn’t work, then using M#GA-esque tactics straight out of the right-wing playbook to twist social justice rhetoric back on the marginalized to gaslight, bully, and deflect away from your own shittiness, then declare a win when the people you’ve been harassing are too tired to bother engaging with you.

Btw, POC can be racist against other POC. IF anything, your darling Angela is proof of that, since she uses being of Middle Eastern descent to claim her harassment of both me and a Latinx author couldn’t have a single hint of racism to motivate it.

Learn up before you try this shite.

Also remember to delete your half of DM convos with incriminating evidence about the shite you pull, claim to be so remorseful about, and then pull yet again when you feel your crusades justify it.

See, you’ve been in my LJ, too. And that’s a particular violation not because of anything you might find there, but because you felt like, just because you didn’t like me, that gave you the right to be privy to a private space with my lifelong friends, where I spent years growing and maturing and trying to find my place amidst struggles with poverty, mental health, physical health, and all the little joys and pains of daily life. You decided you had the right to private interactions with friends and the place where I vent frustrations with my difficulties with people and socialization to prove…what? That just like anyone else, I was a brash and mouthy little shite when I was 23 or so, especially when struggling to define my identity as trans and feeling like I had to prove myself against toxic masculinity standards? Or trying to prove that I’m leading some kind of double life, versus having a public life and having a private one and trying to keep some separation between the two just like anyone else whose career exists in the public eye?

According to you I’m not allowed to exist anywhere. If I share any bits of my life in public just to relate to other people I’ve befriended on social media, I’m oversharing and have no right to talk about boundaries. If I keep my life to a private space, you find your way into that space by any means necessary and justify how unethical it is because in your heads, you’re righteous and not just bullies fucking around with double standards and getting high off the harassment.

Thing is, I know you didn’t hack my LJ based on session logs, and also based on your shitty assumptions–though I also know you’ve been trawling through there based on visitor traffic when I haven’t posted there myself since 2017 and everything is friends-locked so public traffic isn’t possible. If you’d been in my actual LJ under my user name you’d have seen over a decade of posts talking about trans experiences, HRT, etc. on filtered entries open to just a few people who knew, many friends who were also trans. But that means you hacked one of my friend’s accounts to be able to view whatever entries they had access to via filters, which means you’re totally okay with collateral damage because to you anyone associated with me is automatically evil and deserves what they get.

There is something seriously wrong with every last one of your little crew. Except maybe J. I have a feeling she’s less a shitty person and more a passive enabler who just craved solidarity after how Santino and friends treated her. But maybe I’m biased because she’s the only one I ever had normal, decent human conversations with as Sakura. Though I’m willing to be wrong there, considering I’ve also watched her join in on harassing me and others.

I should probably rewind and recap for people who aren’t in the thick of this, considering you’re probably noticing that’s the @sweetsakuradoll account–and yes, that was me.

Sit. Down.

Let’s have a little chat, you and I.

Back when the Santino debacle exploded, I took on a role as Sakura because it bothered me that many people were afraid to come forward about the shite they dealt with with Santino because of Nikki’s erratic and volatile behavior, often attacking them. So I stepped in anonymously to provide a safe place for SH’s victims to speak without getting their heads torn off, as someone who believed them because I’d dealt with the shittiness of being Santino’s “friend” myself. I didn’t want to be open about who I was so as not to detract from the point and the cause.

Unfortunately that meant working directly with Nikki and company, which was…an unpleasant experience, to say the least. I tried not to get in too deep, because I understood completely why no one had believed them despite the evidence presented. They’re toxic. Being right once doesn’t make them less toxic.

So I ran #SHConfessions. I was able to be there for people like Noah and Ais, and that was all that mattered. Susan Lee stepped up to take on the heavy lifting of exposing Santino, and everything went as everything went. Once it was over, I quietly detached and went back to my life. I had my own mess to handle with Riptide, so I could just…settle, and extricate from the drama, and move forward with a clean slate. My only remaining connection to the SH mess was a Patreon pledge to Ais, because I just didn’t want to live in that space fixating on him. That included disassociating with Nikki and crew, because just as people they gave me seriously bad vibes. I didn’t want to be around them, didn’t want to see them, so they just kind of quietly faded for me and I forgot about them save for an occasional RT passing the curated lists I read. Though I mean, I’ve always known they would come for me sooner or later, and that was one of the risks of stepping up and advocating for SH’s victims. Nikki herself proved how volatile she was and how quickly she’d turn on me over the smallest difference of opinion during the entire SH mess. She was calling me Santino 2.0 even back then and said I was trying to control her just because I asked her to stop shrieking at people she wants on her side and rage-deleting the account any time someone questioned her methods. I ignored her jabs and just kept doing the work then, too, but I knew it was only a matter of time.

So moving forward, I guess I don’t fall on their radar again either until #cockygate and His Cocky Valet. What started as a joke about writing a book to challenge Faleena, dilute her market brand, and make it harder for her to universally enforce her trademark turned into a real thing when Twitter started egging me on and encouraging me to be petty. I wrote a book in a week, we had fun sharing vicarious petty, and when I threw the book up on Amazon I wasn’t expecting it to really go anywhere. I figured 20 people would buy it for the novelty and that was it. It didn’t matter; it just needed to exist as a challenge to Faleena’s trademark.

Instead it hit #1 in Gay Romance and stayed there for like a week. It’s my bestselling, most reviewed book of all time.

It’s also my lowest rated, and I mean it doesn’t shock me? I wrote it in 7 days, and it’s unrealistic fantasy wish fulfillment and a grief coping mechanism re: my Dad’s death where there was some magical handwave solution to save him plus someone strong enough and hyper-capable enough to lean on through the mess. It’s a fun book, an emotional book, but it’s going to bug some people and that’s their right.

Apparently it bugged the Nasty Birds. First apparently my motivations, as they decided that rather than just random whim, silly luck, and attempts at defiance, instead it was crass opportunism and I had somehow deliberately orchestrated the book’s success for my gain (I’m not that clever, y’all). Then, apparently, they read the book and hated it (which I didn’t find out until later).

Okay.

I mean, okay??? Not everyone likes a book. And I had no idea that them not liking the book was something I was supposed to be aware of and apparently angry about until it filtered through to me that they thought I was subtweeting them about reviews I’d never read and snarky GR shelves I’d never seen, while claiming they were afraid of retaliation toward reviewers I’d never even heard of, etc. I just wasn’t engaged with this at all as I was still reeling from the sudden popularity of the book and trying to figure out how to cope with the attention, so I just…wasn’t really focused on them. When things did get back to me through the grapevine, I shrugged and ignored it. I don’t engage with reviewers on negative reviews. They kept going. I kept ignoring it. I wasn’t going to bother them and they weren’t directly addressing me, so we just…stayed in our separate spaces.

Welp, then things got weird. Apparently they started watching my conversations with people and realizing some of my friends had them blocked? I guess they’d been blocked from well before when they were showing their behinds and attacking people and no one understood why. But that was incentive enough to start screencapping and mocking my friends’ accounts based on those assumptions, assuming anything they said was subtweets about them, all for being associated with me, and all because I…wrote a book they didn’t like and then didn’t get upset when they didn’t like it?

Things went really way off the rails, though, when another author decided she wanted to defend the book and the idea of “adjacent-reality” books in general. In her tweets and her review, she discussed this and defended His Cocky Valet and the unrealistic portions of it as plot devices. She was summarily called on it, dragged, and pushed into apologizing and deleting her tweets (which I’ve seen via screencap) and her review (which I have not seen). Then the screams of “it’s happening again” and “you’re letting him get away with it” (whatever “it” is) started, because apparently…I orchestrated this?

Y’all, I didn’t even know what was going on until the author had already deleted her tweets. The first time we spoke was when I was trying to figure out what the fuck was going on and asked her what had happened, because I kept seeing my name and hers paired up when we just…didn’t know each other. Once I sussed it out, I even talked to her about why she has to be more aware of her limitations in what she can do and how she can critique reviews when she’s not just a reader, she’s an author with a platform. She apologized to me for further stirring the pot, but the damage had already been done, and the conspiracy theories spun so far out of control I honestly had no clue what was even happening anymore.

Especially when they shifted targets. Since I was ignoring them and staying on my side of the line and they weren’t getting a rise out of anyone else, they went after multiple disabled, mentally ill queer POC and Jewish authors they felt were part of my “squad,” including Lina Langley–with the help of two white male authors who had a grudge against Lina. The grounds they chose to attack her on–her, a femme Latinx enby and none of the millions of white male authors doing the thing they were crucifying her over–were a smokescreen to have someone to rip apart, only to claim they were going after the “squad” because she and I were friends and somehow all accountable for each other’s actions despite being independent adults doing our own things. Their harassment of her has remained continuous, even after they bullied her off social media and stalked her to the point of taking screenshots of her Upwork profile, as apparently having a job was a cardinal sin, too. They are constantly targeting her and mocking her books, attempting to get her delisted, etc. It’s something to do with categories? I’m not even wholly sure what the issue is. I do know that Amazon is on Lina’s side and every time the Birds and friends report her books, Lina’s contact on Amazon’s escalated customer service team restores them. They’ve specifically said she’s doing nothing wrong, so.

But here’s where things get even weirder.

Apparently a few readers stepped up to defend the subject matter of one of Lina’s more taboo books as necessary for abuse survivors who need certain types of stories as exploratory and healing tools. Somehow this, also, was…orchestrated by me? Over a book that wasn’t even my own? Because…squad…or something?

Here’s the thing, bubbies. Other people are capable of independent action and agency, and just because someone chooses to enact something pertaining to me or thinly connected to me by Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon doesn’t mean it’s an action orchestrated by me. I have no control over other people’s decisions, particularly decisions that I likely won’t approve of. And particularly the decisions of complete strangers???

That’s the bizarre thing. I don’t know the author who defended HCV. I don’t know the other people who countered the claims about both me and Lina. I even went searching to see what in any kind of idle conversation of intersecting threads could have made them think I know these people and am capable of “sending” them to “shame” anyone, and I couldn’t find anything because I had never communicated with these people in my natural life.

You want to hold me accountable for the actions of a stranger, that’s on you. You want to frame a queer MOC for the actions of a white woman because it suits your grudge, that’s still on you.

Not on me.

Also on you is calling a disabled Jewish enby sex educator and survior of sexual assault and one of the most beloved, kindest members of the queer book community a pedophile for trying to discuss fiction as a coping mechanism, etc. You really don’t care who you hurt as long as you get to be self-righteous.

So yeah. There’s a lot more, but this is the general gist of it. It’s been a nonstop campaign of harassment and inflammatory behavior, looking for everything they could to pick apart while I and anyone associated with me just…left them alone. While they assumed that all of us just going about our lives and doing our things was actually an attack on them, and assumed we were responding to their petty digs here and there when we often didn’t even know about them until long after the fact.

They even jumped in on my oddball spelling. Which then kindly descended into mocking me for being “pretend British” versus a diaspora POC who absorbed English in ways different from your typical native speakers, meaning I absorbed a kind of pidgin of hybrid British and American spellings while still being entirely American. I’ve always been honest about that and it’s even been in my FAQ for years; sometimes I try to switch it off, but it always comes back with particular spellings, particularly profanity. But you go fight the good fight and go rope in a few white dudes to help you mock the POC. Bonus points if those white dudes are British or European, and have the audacity to sneer about people from colonized countries absorbing the language that was forced on them. That’s peak woke, being from a country that forced English on a global scale and then mocking brown people for speaking it. Go you. Fight the good fight. Get those dirty diaspora POC with their pretend English.

And hey, let’s compare Lina to a show dog and then pull a Bill Clinton defending your wording as not racist by questioning the definition of “like,” because you totally get to tell POC you hurt how they’re allowed to feel about your racist behavior.

Somehow, btw, people calling them on their racism was my doing, too. Okay. And they really just love to sneer at any author discussing issues facing marginalized authors in this community as “subtweeting reviewers again.’ We’re not allowed to speak, not allowed to discuss our experiences.

And let’s not forget the fun little dog whistle of continuously comparing anyone who disagrees with you to Santino and squad, using fear of being tarred and feathered with that brush to silence people and bully them into place.

I don’t have time for all the shite you’re accusing me of; I’ve just been over here quietly living my life while you turn every idle thing I do and say into a crime. I have books to write, friends to keep up with, and increasingly minimal spoons for either with chronic illness that you, by the way, are exacerbating due to stress, so thanks for all the puking and lost hours to fatigue and depression and trauma. Pat yourselves on the back. You know you want to. I don’t think you have the moral capacity to even care about the impact of what you’re doing, what you’ve been doing, and the vulnerable minorities you’ve been targeting when you’ve decided to construct yourselves a villain, and you won’t be turned aside from that. I’m sure even now you’re hunting through your stock of GIFs for something involving lies, villainy, etc. The usuals. You’re predictable.

Now. Let’s talk about this.

That, my darlings, is why I brought up the subject of the Birds and friends getting into my LiveJournal (complete with subtweets coinciding with dates in traffic spikes on LJ metrics), because I guess this was their smoking gun–that Uber, my partner of over a year at one point, was a safety smokescreen of my own, and on my LiveJournal I discussed how much I hated it and how wrong I felt about it, and how I was going to end it because bleh.

Like you’ve never told pushy people “I have a boyfriend” so they’ll leave you alone.

Let’s rewind again. When I first came on the M/F scene as Cole McCade, after realizing I needed a new pen name because my real-me platform was built solely as an editor…I was 100% closeted–both as a MOC and as a queer man–with no idea what I was doing and no preparation at all for the attention that was going to be directed at me, and the expectations the M/F crowd would have of me. They constantly pushed these expectations of hypersexuality and sexual performance on me as a male author, constantly dug for details about my personal life, and I was so anxious and afraid of starting off on the wrong foot that I gave in. I performed sexy, I let people invade on me, I hated it. Little bits of me came out more and more, where I couldn’t stand not admitting I was brown, couldn’t stand not admitting I was bi, even if I’d said I was straight before. People go in the closet for their careers. It happens. People’s understanding of their sexualities also change. This was part of what helped me realize I was on the ace spectrum, even, after a lifetime of trying to pretend to be allosexual to fit this ideal of who a queer man is supposed to be.

The problem is I’d set a precedent, that it was okay to encroach on me sexually. And I didn’t know how to get out of it without exploding and pissing a lot of people off and tanking my career, so I pulled the “sorry, I have a boyfriend” that’s been used as long as there have been humans to deflect unwanted sexual attention. Thus Uber was born, initially as a quick deflection–but Uber came to represent pretty much everyone I dated over that period, lumped under a single umbrella. The anecdotes and such were real; the silly moments, the sweetness and the heartaches; they just didn’t all belong to the same people, as I dated a few over that time. All that mattered was that I was in a stable relationship, so people stepped back and gave me some space and respect without branding me as an arsehole for saying back the fuck off, you’re making me feel gross.

So I had my space, and I had a lie I hated, and one that became increasingly unnecessary when I had cultivated a better audience who didn’t behave that way toward me while I carefully pushed them to the other side of my sexual boundaries. I didn’t like how the lie felt, even when there was someone behind the Uber mantle (and they always knew).

So I let the last real breakup be the Uber breakup, and let it go, and only now and then shared my dating shenanigans because hey, guess what, dating as trans is hard but also sometimes pretty self-deprecatingly funny.

I’m sure that’s not enough for some, but that’s what happened. Coping mechanisms while my anxious, awkward arse flailed and tried to figure out what the hell I was doing and not get entirely swallowed up by this, and falling into peer pressure. It’s not something I’m proud of, it was a panic decision when I was overwhelmed, but it’s there.

So that’s it. Sorry I’m not the mastermind or villain I’ve been made out to be. I don’t have the energy for that.

I’d say I want to know concretely what was driving this other than some desperate need for attention and validation, but actually? I don’t want to know. I don’t care that much, and I don’t want to get dirty with that mess inside your toxic little heads.

I would rather have Santino back than watch you rampage around attempting to stir up another scandal.

At least he was honest about being a piece of shite, even if he wasn’t honest about much else.

You wanted someone new to take down once the attention you got for SH waned and you couldn’t get it back, so you created someone when no one easily and readily presented themselves as a target you could feel personally vindicated against. I have never retaliated against you or sought to hurt you in any way. I just let you sit there and continue to drag me for no reason other than your own entertainment, even while you made up shite to try to make me out as the next Santino.

Sorry. It’s just not happening.

And I’m sure I’ve given you ammunition to say “no, it’s not us, you’re pointing fingers at us and blaming us and being horrible and misinterpreting our subtweets and vaguetweets” because I stepped up and took control of this narrative out of your hands before you could trumpet your gleeful “gotcha” moment openly. That’s how you work. Shady and always giving yourself an out to twist your ugliness back onto the people you hurt.

That’s fine. I don’t care. Say what you want. Scream and rail against me. It won’t be any worse than the powerless feeling I’ve had for months, watching you be so horrible and shitty to me and anyone associated with me while I felt compelled to remain silent because of author/reader boundaries. Do what you will.

But you will not take my identity from me.

Maybe I should even be glad for this mess. All this time I’ve avoided writing trans and nonbinary and two-spirit centered stories out of fear of hurting other trans folk when they saw my personal lived experience as a trans man filtered through the lens of perceived cisness, altering its impact. I don’t have that limitation anymore, and can write my stories and tell my truths and say “this is my experience, it may not reflect yours, but it’s mine.”

And if anyone has a problem with me being trans? If you think I deceived you somehow?

One: I don’t owe you or anyone disclosure. No trans person does, especially not at the cost of our safety and often our lives. Cis people be wildin. Y’all will kill us for a hiccup in a crowded room. No sir, no ma’am, no mx. You do not get to demand that any more than you get to walk up to a stranger on the street and tell them to drop their jimmies so you can inspect the dangles and the angles. The only person/people I ever feel obligated to disclose to are intimate partners or anyone who might be looking at my credit or leasing history to understand the reason for the name change in my background checks. You are not entitled to trans folk’s identities or bodies. Being closeted is not deception. It’s self-preservation.

Two: If I am suddenly less interesting to you as a male author because I’m trans, that tells me you’re only here for the cis dick and you might want to analyze the internalized transphobia and misogyny that makes you dismiss trans men as lesser. That’s your problem. I don’t have to make it mine.

I have never been ashamed of being trans, or how that intersects with two-spirit expression in my heritage. Only private about it for the sake of my own safety and mental health, and to have something sacred to myself when having a career in the public eye tends to take everything from me, one way or the other.

I am a beautiful gender disaster, I love myself, and you can fuck right off. You will not take who I am away from me.

But I’ll still be here. I may delete my Twitter as I’ve wanted to for a while and this is reason enough when this place is just too much stress and full of too many crappy people, but I’ll still be here–writing books, publishing books, and…well…there’s really not much you can do about it. I mean, you can write to Entangled if you want to and try to get them to pull the one book I have published with them, but considering they’ve known I was trans since they hired me as an editor in 2011 or 2012, I really don’t think they’re gonna care. It’s been pretty much an open secret for a long time, and you’d be surprised how many people know and have known for a while, and said nothing because they understood it was a matter of my safety.

I’d say I’m sorry, but I’m not.

Because I don’t owe you an apology for a damned thing, while you’re out here endangering my life because I wasn’t upset that you didn’t like my book.

Go get your validation kicks somewhere else.

I’m tired.

The End of My Patreon

Yes. You read that right. It’s been a long, strange journey, but my Patreon will be shutting down and reverting to a patron-only page so I can continue supporting the creators I’ve pledged to, effective at some point late in the evening on August 29th, 2018. The reason I’ve chosen that date is to ensure I cut it off before Patreon even thinks about starting to bill you; Patrons probably noticed that I paused my creator page this past month so you weren’t billed on the last cycle.

This means that any files you want to grab, get them before then. If anything has expired off (I hate that Patreon does that) and you need it, please comment on Patreon and let me know so I can re-upload it.

What? Why? Is the Criminal Intentions series ending? Do Patrons have to pay for the books now?

That’s a lot. Let’s cover the pertinent things in brief and then I’ll ramble at y’all about the finer details:

Why? Many, many, many reasons. We’ll get to those in a sec.

No, the Criminal Intentions series is not ending. It’s continuing on Amazon.

However, former Patrons will never have to pay for the books for the life of the series, all the way out to the end.

All the books? All the free?

Yes. Whether I end the series in Season Three or Season Five, Patrons will receive every book for free from this point out. That’s anywhere from 39 to 65 books, depending on where I end the series. No matter if you pledged at the $1 tier or the $50 tier, for one month or for six months, when I send out ARC files every month prior to Amazon release I’ll also be sending the books to former Patrons via email – only with no expectation to review unless you want to. It’s one way I can show my gratitude for the support you’ve offered, and how much of a difference you’ve all made in my life.

This is only applicable to Patrons who signed up before this news was originally announced via Patreon on August 20th, 2018.

I have everyone’s emails from the export of pledge data, and the emails will start with S1E4 once I finish it and get it properly edited before its October 10th Amazon release date. If at any point you don’t want to receive them, you can just reply to the email and let me know, and I’ll remove you from the distribution group.

I adore y’all. I really do. And I hope this is a step in making up for being so delinquent.

If you adore your Patrons so much, why are you closing your Patreon?

Hoh boy. This is where it gets complicated. Let’s break this down.

I’ve reached a point in my career where Patreon pledges are no longer life or death for me regarding financial sustainability and sheer survival, and it feels unethical to accept Patron support that other creators need more than I do.

I’m going to be honest: there was a time when Patreon pledges were the only reason I could pay my rent, or eat, or afford my meds. I was struggling for a good long while, and Patron support meant everything to me. I’ve been so grateful, and so appreciative that I’ve been lucky enough to have such kind people willing to take a chance on me.

Originally the plan with Criminal Intentions was to build my Patreon up into a significant portion of a hopefully sustainable author income, sort of balancing between Amazon revenues and Patreon pledges for early and bonus content. That plan, however, changed when my career + my work life went through some major shifts, overall adjusting my outlook for how and what I do as an author, and shifting where both Patreon and CI fit into those plans.

While all this change has been pretty drastic, it’s also been…honestly, amazing. I’ve never known what it was like to not be poor and scraping until now. I’ve never known what it was like to have healthcare when I need it until now. I feel like I can finally breathe and feel hopeful about my life, career, and health, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say that a large amount of that feeling and my success is because y’all were in my corner. You’re wonderful, generous people, and I don’t even know how to describe the overwhelming outpouring of respect and admiration I have for you.

But I also know that you have other creators you support. I know money’s not infinite. I know many creators still rely on those Patreon pledges for food, rent, life-saving meds. They need that support – while I’m in a place where, with my sustainable income outside of Patreon stabilizing, I wouldn’t feel right accepting Patron support when you could be funneling those pledges toward creators who need it more.

It feels like the ethical thing to do, basically. Freeing up what you’ve pledged to me, so you can pledge it to other creators you love and show them the same support and kindness you’ve shown me.

All of these changes in my life also mean new opportunities have opened up for me with a few amazing people, and I can’t balance those opportunities and extra Patreon content at the same time.

I’ll be announcing a few new projects on a couple of other platforms coming in the next few months – people and publishers who’ve reached out to me inviting me to work on some really exciting things.

However, that means more time commitments, and reallocating how I focus my efforts. Even if I woke up tomorrow somehow magically caught up on my tier level commitments, I still wouldn’t be able to fit in consistently producing monthly extra content like I might have before these new things happened.

The past few months have proven that with my mental and physical health being so erratic, Patreon is not a platform I work well on.

So I’ve always been a burst writer, with fallow periods in between; I can produce six months’ worth of content in one or two months sometimes, but then I kind of plotz and die for a while and turn into mush. A lot of that has to do with my erratic, unpredictable mental health; I never know when I’m going to go into a slump that I can’t break out of even with meds and self-motivation, or how long it will take to lift.

Compound that with worsening physical health from my immune disorder, and it’s no longer a given that I can fight out at least a few days per month to hardcore blitz content. Again, this is a change and a realization that has happened over recent months. I still have the capacity to produce one novel per month, but anything else is nebulous and inconsistent.

That might have flown when I was several months ahead on content, and could take fallow periods and still have things prepared to deliver on time. But…well…everything happened. SantinoGate, RiptideGate, major job upheaval, this fucking house trying to kill me. And I lost all my lead time, and the longer it took me to try to forge on, the more of a guilt spiral I fell into, and the less I was capable of as my wonky brain chemicals kicked me around and stole my spoons.

I don’t want to keep trying to promise I can deliver bonus content this month, then hating myself when I fail, then feeling guilty when you’re so patient and understanding, and just digging myself into a deeper and deeper mental hole only to further fuck up my body trying to cram everything.

My brain, basically, is an arsehole.

I’m never going to catch up after the sheer riotous hell of the last few months.

It’s just not possible. Not when I’m also staying on top of the current monthly release schedule on Amazon; there is no way I will go back to being able to deliver each novel on Patreon three months before Amazon anymore. Not without the aid of some wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey gadgets I don’t have on hand.

These past few months have just been…way too much, even not counting the upheaval of changing jobs twice in as many months. I am a walking disaster, y’all. Like, I think I brought a curse to this house. Exploding hot water heater, dead furnace, backed up sewer main, raw sewage in the shower, collapsing deck, electrical outlets frying my appliances, cat killing my TV, dead animal in the heating ducts leading to hordes of invading blowflies. Not to mention all the people in and out fixing and cleaning up after all that. This shite has consumed my life and my focus, and that’s time and energy and attention I can’t get back or somehow rewind. If I try, everything else is going to fall apart.

…I’ll let y’all know if the house starts whispering at me to get out.

I’m no longer able to deliver certain content that was originally planned because my computer now lacks the capability.

Primarily, the audio recordings and sketches. This computer is dying, y’all. Many of you probably saw just last week on Twitter when it lost its shite and it took me hours to get it going again. I can barely have my email client and a Word doc open at the same time. I’m copy-pasting and saving this post as I write it out of panic for another black screen.

This dying behemoth just doesn’t have the juice anymore to either run Adobe Audition so I can record audio and clean out the background noise, or to manage sketching in Photoshop with real-time brush strokes. I’m hoping to get a new computer soon, but it’ll still be a while and that ship has sailed.

So what happens to the bonus content, such as extra scenes, interviews, playlists, etc?

It’s being moved to the VIP Section of my website, with other content posted as free for newsletter subscribers – and it will continue to be free for newsletter subscribers. However for former Patrons, if you don’t want to join the newsletter, you can find the password for this section in the Patreon version of this post.

I should have everything up there by now; I’ve also posted a few new things both there and on Patreon, including the CI S1E3 episode playlist and another bonus scene. I’ve also finally gotten my shite together and posted my pre-Patreon backlist files for the appropriate tier levels on Patreon, so you have a few days left to grab those.

I will still be producing occasional new bonus content and posting it to the VIP section, but it’ll be on an at-whim basis rather than monthly.

I’ll probably also do occasional AMAs via Twitter, and maybe some series trivia (like, you know, what song the person in the final scene of S1E3 is humming as they walk away).

Special Notice for all $25+ Patrons

I will be reaching out to you individually via email in the coming month; each of you will receive signed paperback copies of the first three episodes of the series, regardless of whether you were a $25+ patron for one month or three.

I will also be reaching out to $50 patrons regarding input in a future episode.

Other Future Steps

I’ve removed the Patreon release schedule from my website, and all links to the Patreon page from the book descriptions, etc. If you find any remaining links, I’d appreciate if you let me know. I’ve also removed my Ko-Fi link from the main website menu. That’s another area where people’s kindness made a massive difference in my ability to survive, but it’s no longer a life-or-death thing for me and I’d rather people sent those donations to people with greater need even though I love you for the sentiment behind wanting to offer support.

Okay, so all that makes sense, but you still vanished and weren’t very responsive, and you kind of let us down.

I did, and I’m sorry for that. My anxiety basically started flipping the fuck out to the point where I couldn’t even load the Patreon page without being afraid I’d see that alert that I’d lost someone or disappointed someone, so I just avoided it. Hyperventilated a few times. Completely forgot about the monthly AMAs when my brain went swiss-cheesy with stress. Hated myself more and more when I said “soon” and “soon” never came.

I just kind of went into a complete shutdown spiral over my inability to cope, the overwhelming shitestorm that was my daily life, and the feeling of failure, and I didn’t give you the communication, transparent updates, and responses you deserved. Turtling is a thing I do, but it’s not really a good thing. I’m deeply sorry, and I understand if you feel disappointed.

I hope that transitioning all Patrons to lifetime free recipients of the full series is a step in beginning to compensate for that, but if there’s anything else I can do for y’all or anything you’d like me to answer, just let me know and I’ll do my best.

For a writer, I’m falling short on words right now to tell you how much I appreciate you, and how much your support and patience mean to me. It’s this feeling in my chest that’s at once heavy and warm, overwhelming and breathless. You are all the most amazing people, and I’m so glad I had the chance to meet you.

Thank you. For everything.

-X

A revised version of this post with Patron-only information appeared on my Patreon on August 20th, 2018.

Confession: I am not okay.

A lot of people these days ask me if I’m okay. They ask how I’m doing, if I’m coping, if I need anything. Some of them are asking because it’s expected. Many more are asking because they’re genuinely worried. They honestly want to know. They grasp entirely how overwhelming this has all been.

And I lie to them every time.

I lie and say I’m a bit shaken, but getting better every day. I lie and say things turned out for the best, and I’m a little burnt out but getting over it.

I lie and say I’m some form of okay, when I’m not and I haven’t been for over a month.

I can even tell you why I lie. I lie because it’s socially expected. I lie because many of these kind people are strangers to me, and I don’t want our first interaction to be a massive drop of the burden of my entirely fucked headspace. I lie because many of these people are my friends, and I can’t ask them to do the emotional labor of holding me up. I lie out of pride. I lie because I feel like because everything turned out the right way and we can see a path to blaze new ground in this industry, I should be okay.

But I’m not.

I’m still struggling with just…life. I lose hours trying to convince myself to get up and do basic tasks, hours I can’t afford to waste because my time as a freelancer is billed in product created, not in hourly wages. I don’t get paid by the hour to have a slow day; if I have a slow day I lose out, and god damn have I been losing out, to the point where I’m struggling on a shoestring and yet even that just makes it harder to focus with anxiety and worries about mundane life crushing down. For a while it was so bad I was basically told to stay off duty until I could make sensible words again; I accumulated the first of three strikes required to get fired from my job. I don’t sleep right; sleeping feels like being dead, and it just makes me more tired. Food has no appeal. I keep eyeing the 100+ backlogged DMs that I really want to answer, and I just…can’t.

Occasionally I just hit this point of frustration with trying to function and burst out crying when I can’t, because every time I think I’ve isolated and excised the bads in my brain they just adapt like malware and tunnel deeper and find a way to fuck me up again. I keep trying to find my way to some level of normal, let alone the hyperspeed I usually function at, and it’s not working.

I’m not working. I’m broken, and I don’t know what to do with that.

Especially when I feel like I shouldn’t be.

Broken, that is.

No more than I normally am.

I know what many of you will tell me. That this past month has been a lot. A lot. Enough to break anyone. I was involved with the SH mess—more than y’all even know—and had my own mess with discussing Sarah Lyons and the entrenched culture at Riptide…and let me tell y’all, on top of dredging up my own shite, my own hurt, my own humiliation…vicarious trauma is a thing. And by a thing I mean a hammer to the face, taking in others’ stories of the pain they went through and somehow getting them tangled up inside me until they echoed off the walls of my similar experiences and amplified exponentially.

Trauma squared. It’ll wreck you inside and out.

And I mean…I’ve never been at the center of a social media blowup before. I just. Fuck. Wow. No one tells you that leaves you with a weird hollow feeling behind your eyes and your brain feeling like it’s stuffed into a jar too small to hold it, as all of that batters you in the face. And I am an introvert of the highest order. The only reason you think I’m not is because my career has trained me to be able to tamp down the wide-eyed moment of panic when I realize my batteries have burned out mid-convo, and taught me to put on a good face and still find a way to smile and laugh and be mildly-if-awkwardly-witty for people even when I’m close to hyperventilating and need to be inside a hamster ball with everyone else on the outside of it for just a little while.

Death threats. Okay. People calling me mentally ill, telling me to kill myself because I’m a waste of a life, calling me a liar, screaming at me for not posting their hateful comments to the point where I had to close all comments on my blog to make people stop abusing me in my space. Strangers telling me every bit of mortification I went through was unimportant, and I should care more about a racist serial sexual harasser losing her job than about the fact that she actually was a racist serial sexual harasser.

Maybe that’s another reason to not be okay.

Complete lack of closure, too, in the Riptide situation. I’ve been trying to speak to them through an intermediary and good friend regarding suggestions (basically more free labor) to improve their culture and organization and to protect authors, as well as requesting the rights back to SHATTERPROOF, opening a discussion about compensation for unpaid labor, and requesting an actual apology that acknowledges me as a human being and not a talking point for their statements. I got SHATTERPROOF back. Everything else they have pointedly not commented on, to the point of barely responding or not responding to follow-ups at all. What little response they’ve made has just dug the wound deeper, and basically it feels like they’re hoping I’ll take my book and go away so they can pretend this never happened.

They can answer tweets about Triton still being an operating imprint, but they can’t answer me after every other insult on top of injury, unless it’s to demand additional labor of me and attempt invasions of my privacy.

Okay.

And there’s the knowledge, too, that I still have more things buried inside me that I will never openly tell in more than vague statements. Like the beloved author who was once my “friend”—but during that friendship completely dismissed my upset about Sarah’s behavior, labeling her “harmless,” only to now gather accolades for their courage in pulling their books from Riptide; that same “friend” viciously attacked me for avoiding Santino, and was my first taste of how dangerous it was to not toe the line with “his” worshippers.

But that “friend” is good at putting on a public face and reaping the rewards when it’s advantageous.

Then there’s the lead editor at another publishing house who told me that by explaining to a different editor why a change request was culturally offensive and I couldn’t agree to make it, I essentially called the editor a “racist wh*re” even though I’ve never said those words in my life. When I protested, I was told that I lacked the objectivity to see that that’s what I’d done, but a white woman with no experience with POC life or the culture I was writing about was entirely objective enough to decide that for me, and to chide me that with time I would have enough distance to agree with her, because clearly there was no other option.

It’s entirely possible if she hadn’t said that on the phone I’d be quite happy to point out who said it, and what publisher they work for; we need to stop letting shite like this slide and start exposing it. But with phone conversations it’s her word against mine, and I know from experience exactly how good she is with gaslighting and verbal manipulation in situations like that. I also know how quickly she’ll resort to bullying people into silence with lawyers, with how often she’s done it in the past.

And after everything else, with all the shite bottled up in me, I don’t have the strength for that fight.

I don’t have the strength to go through another situation like this again.

But it still lives inside me, doing its damage.

So maybe I have reasons to not be okay. But I just…I don’t fucking want to not be okay. I don’t want to justify it and then sit here and feel like shite until it goes away. I want it to go away when I tell it to go away. I want my capacity and capability back. I want my mind and body to obey instead of slowly destabilizing into coagulated lumps. I want my brain to rewire itself back to where it was before the beginning of March. I want to be happy about all my plans I have upcoming, CRIMINAL INTENTIONS launching next week, story ideas I love. I want to go back to making y’all laugh with self-deprecating sarcasm over the silly, harmless little hot messes my life gets into. (I’m still holding grudges against voles.) I want to function at breakneck speed again and make everyone side-eye me when I burn and burn and burn until I burn myself out, knowing damn well that once I’ve rested I’m going to do it all over again.

I want to feel like me again, instead of like the charred remnants of what happened when the fire burned too bright, spread too far, and left just the ashes of a man in their wake.

I want to stop crying.

I want to stop struggling against my fucked-up neurochemistry just to accomplish the simplest things.

But I don’t know how.

No one tells you that even when you achieve a victory in shitty situations like this, even when people believe you and validate you, even when the right thing happens, even when good is done in the wake of cataclysmic change…

It still leaves you broken.

The trauma doesn’t just go away.

And I likely need professional help, but thanks to the detritus of the last year of shitty missed opportunities in the wake of Riptide’s post-SHATTERPROOF fuckery plus my current dysfunction in trying to stay on top of work…I honestly can’t afford therapy/counseling/etc. So I don’t know what to do.

Wait it out?

Scream into the void?

Quit everything and disappear?

Write rambling blog posts that don’t accomplish anything and put way too much of my personal shite out there?

Y’all?

…when do I get to be okay again?

On Sarah Lyons and Why I Ended My Relationship With Riptide Publishing

I know the dust hasn’t settled from…god…everything else in MM publishing, but I need to do this now. Both so my life can go back to normal after this last upheaval, and before I lose my nerve. I’m already shredded raw after my involvement in the Santino Hassell debacle, and the way “he” and “his” cohorts hurt me, affected my reputation, and potentially damaged my career. So I need to get this out. I’ve been intending to for a long time, but hesitated for numerous reasons.

I need to not hesitate anymore, because I want my life back. I want things to be calm and normal and ordinary with work and writing and my friends. I want to be past all of these things, these horrible revelations.

That means taking one last big, rather frightening leap.

I’ll get into more detail as we go, but the main point is this:

I ended my relationship with Riptide because the company was at all levels hostile to me as a person of color, and because Sarah Lyons inappropriately shared sexual information that made me unsafe.

But for right now…let’s break down events leading up to termination of my contract for the second book in the SHATTERPROOF universe, UNRAVEL, with Riptide. The contract cancellation was initiated by me, but mutually agreed upon by Riptide.

Beginning in June of 2014, I worked with Sarah Lyons (also known as Sarah Frantz and Sarah Frantz Lyons) on SOMETIMES IT STORMS, my story in the WINTER RAIN charity anthology. During edits, not knowing my identity as a queer man of color from an impoverished background, she lectured me on what she presumed I didn’t know about how students from disadvantaged backgrounds wouldn’t even know university was an option without what she, as a learned academic, told them. I corrected her. She apologized. I gave her the benefit of the doubt as a one-time incident, and moved on. We completed edits.

(click to enlarge)

During late July and early August of 2015, Sarah Lyons invited me to apply for a job as a Riptide editor. After submitting my editing test, I would not hear back on this for months despite repeated inquiries and ongoing personal and professional emails with Sarah. When she finally answered me after nearly half a year, she told me she did not have enough projects for me. She then tweeted about how happy she was to hire another editor. Sarah’s lack of response created a situation in which she held power over me as an employer with a potential job hanging over my head for months, during a time when my day job was beginning to nosedive and I was desperate for work. The length of time in which she refused to give me a concrete answer prolonged the situation in which I was beholden to her.

In October of 2015 (during the time period in which I was waiting to hear a response back on the job), Sarah Lyons asked me if I had a novella available to fill an open slot Riptide desperately needed to handle. I didn’t, but I offered to write one. Sarah was enthusiastic. This redoubled the power imbalance because now she was both an employer dangling a job over my head and an editor holding a contract over my head.

When I asked Sarah if books centering POC characters were all right when Riptide’s track record included few published characters of color, she informed me that yes, but I couldn’t expect Riptide to put them on the cover. At the time I said nothing because I was afraid of losing both a job and a contract, but I felt gutpunched at being told that people like me were undesirable on covers.

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While I worked on the novella that would eventually become the novel SHATTERPROOF, Sarah began to talk to me about personal matters. I felt I had little choice in the matter of our professional boundaries because, due to the power imbalance, the fear of a lost contract for me as a fledgling, mostly unknown queer POC author, and my hope for a job, I couldn’t run the risk of pushing back.

During the course of this “friendship” I did willingly offer support regarding Sarah’s cancer because I felt it was the right thing to do. I also shared personal details regarding my life and family history in conversations where it felt expected, however I was somewhat uncomfortable but felt trapped in this dynamic at this point. None of the details I shared with Sarah were sexual in nature. Nor did anything I shared invite sexual disclosure.

Many of the details Sarah shared with me via text message were sexual in nature. She repeatedly informed me, uninvited, that she was a sadist, that she was a femdom, how long it had last been since she’d had sexual intercourse with a man, how she fell in love and lust with authors (who, according to her, are all “insane […] high-maintenance egotists” but “totally fucking irresistible”), how many authors she had been in relationships of some sort with. There were implications at one point that some sort of sexual interaction occurred with someone she had over for company. She also rhapsodized over the author known as Santino Hassell, which I found inappropriate from an editor.

I was immensely uncomfortable with the sexual information provided and the implications considering the dynamics of the relationship between editor and prospective author and employer and prospective employee, but the contract and offer of employment were hanging over my head. I do not willingly engage in uninvited sexual discourse with anyone; due to my own personal preferences and my own history of sexual assault trauma, in fact many of these conversations made me feel extremely physically ill. Sarah never sought my consent to be a bystander to her sex life.

Sarah also spoke of her tendency toward extreme emotional reactions, which made me fear what sort of extreme emotional reaction would occur if I asked her to stop.

(Screenshots have been blurred so as not to publicly disclose Sarah’s phone number without consent, and also to protect my private information that I do not feel comfortable sharing publicly.)

When welcoming me as a Riptide author, Sarah also introduced me to over half a dozen people by my real name despite my contract being signed under a pen name and despite me not giving permission for that disclosure. These others were all employees of Riptide, however I sincerely doubt all of them had access to that contract information and would not have known my real name had she not done so.

Once I turned in SHATTERPROOF and edits began, I was assigned to Kate de Groot for detailed edits. Kate de Groot got off on the wrong foot to start with, starting with her choice to greet me in rudimentary Japanese because of my ethnicity and continuing through her snarking on my professional politeness before escalating during the course of edits. She misinterpreted my concerns regarding what I felt was a weak story ending, and criticized a message of support to depression and suicide survivors as a “lengthy apologia” for the book before informing me that I lacked confidence in my story and initiating a series of increasingly aggressive encounters. Many of Kate’s edit notes also ranged from adversarial to insulting to nonsensical, with a healthy dose of racism (such as telling me a Black man’s skin tone would not be discernible in a park well-lit with lamps at night because of the time of starset).

During development of the book blurb, Rachel Haimowitz questioned if it would turn readers off to include mention of my Haitian American hero’s ethnicity in the blurb, while also insulting readers’ intelligence levels. This made me immensely uncomfortable.

During proofreading stages I was allowed to see a note regarding Kate de Groot’s withdrawal of all association with the story. As the author, I should not have been allowed to see that simply as a matter of professional diplomacy. I was upset, and asked Sarah exactly what sort of discussions were being held about me at Riptide that such remarks were being shared where I could see them. Sarah was not privy to the situation, but Kate forwarded our chain of emails. Sarah apologized profusely for Kate’s behavior during edits. I felt obligated to accept the apologies sent via both email and text message due to politics and the position I was in.

Also during proofreading, the proofreader made several insensitive comments such as questioning if a Haitian American of vodou faith was capable of making literary and metaphorical references to Greek mythology, and questioning the “unnecessary” mention of dark skin during intimate scenes. I’m choosing not to name the proofreader because this is one person who, due to their track record in other areas, I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt re: benevolent ignorance. Also I feel that for me to name this specific person would be punching down regardless of what occurred in edits.

(Edit note for clarification: After the publication of this post I was contacted by a proofreader whom I was unaware was involved in the project at all after I finalized with the editor/proofreader mentioned above. To be clear, the insensitive comments were made by a copy editor during what I had thought were the final stages of proofing. This proofreader, going by the initial N, and I never had contact and they were in no way insensitive or discriminatory regarding the manuscript. The person mentioned above who made the insensitive comments goes by the initials AW.)

Over the course of this time period and beyond, Sarah Lyons repeatedly came to me for unpaid sensitivity consulting. I consulted with her on how to manage Amy Lane’s behavior and edits when correcting the “Dark Chocolate Monkey of Love” incident, as well as other consultations on queer identity and use of the n-word in a story. These took place both before she answered me regarding the job, and after; she did not offer payment at the time of consultation in any of these instances. Again, the power imbalance made me feel uncomfortable with refusing, as I felt I had to be part of the team as a Riptide author.

The publication of SHATTERPROOF was lackluster and marred by mishaps. Because I had had past successes in marketing my independent books using paid list services, I crafted a plan to recover SHATTERPROOF from a weak launch. I contacted Sarah Lyons to ask if Riptide would be willing to cooperate with me on timing, pricing, and possibly RTing and promoting some newsletter-exclusive content. I believe I presented this question in a professional, positive manner, offering to do my part to pull the weight of promoting the book while shouldering all expenses associated with my plan.

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Sarah replied as if I had unreasonable expectations of the book’s performance because it “had a lot of strikes against it”, and made offensive comments citing the problem of a cover with a Black man on it plus a book discussing mental health/suicide. I said I declined to respond because my response would be lengthy and angry. Sarah invited me to be honest. I replied with a lengthy email detailing the problems with Riptide’s approach regarding POC books, their ignorance and lack of reader trust in POC markets where books with POC on covers thrive quite well, their lack of steps taken toward cultivating a more diverse audience and hiring more diverse staff.

I also asked her why she stated work volume was the reason she did not hire me when she had hired another editor at the same time. She claimed she had hired the other editor before telling me. I pointed out that the time periods regarding that claim did not match up and I had emails to prove it, she admitted that was true with “yes emails exist” and admitted that she lied to me and the real reason she did not hire me was because she felt I over-edited on the editing test. I was not upset about not meeting the qualifications for the job. I was upset about being strung along with no response for months despite direct inquiries, and then lied to. I would have respected an honest and direct answer in a timely fashion that removed the power Sarah held over me as a prospective employer.

Later, I referred to the unpaid sensitivity consulting in a public tweet responding to another author’s discussion of publishers taking advantage of sensitivity readers and consultants. I did not name Riptide in this discussion. However, Sarah Lyons saw this and emailed me, claiming that she thought I consulted for her out of friendship. She offered me $20 for all incidents in which I consulted for her. I refused, as by that point I found the amount offered insulting after she had lied to me regarding the job she had offered, but clearly valued my expertise; simply not enough to pay me a decent amount for it either as a consultant or as an editor. Sarah expressed confusion that what she did was in any way offensive simply because I chose to turn the other cheek and at the time felt trapped into providing my services for free.

Communications descended into mostly radio silence. I missed my deadline for UNRAVEL even though I was trying. Sarah emailed me under the assumption that I had not turned in UNRAVEL due to our conflicts. I informed her that I was dealing with health issues but still attempting to write the book, but required more time. She agreed.

I fully intended to write the book out of a sense of professional obligation, but I could not when my experience working with Riptide and Sarah Lyons was marred by the moral and ethical issues I detailed above. In February of 2018 I conceded defeat, and emailed Riptide—Sarah specifically—to withdraw the contract. We came to a mutual agreement, and that is the end of my relationship with Riptide. At some point I will write and self-publish UNRAVEL, when I’ve had the chance to remove the negative associations lingering from this experience.

That’s not the end of my story with Sarah.

Over the past week, multiple people—primarily authors—have contacted me regarding their own accounts of Sarah Lyons’ abuse and inappropriate behavior, stating relief that they were not alone when they’ve doubted themselves for so long, offering their support and belief for my experiences as well. They told me things that destroyed my heart. Their experiences ranged from similar to mine—in which Sarah Lyons crossed professional boundaries with unwanted sexual information that made them feel uncomfortable, powerless, and harassed—to scenarios that involved unwanted and uninvited touching, Sarah backing them into physical spaces they could not escape, inappropriate contact, leading questions regarding their BDSM orientation, sexual coercion.

All of these stories shared one common denominator other than Sarah.

Every last one of them asked me not to quote them directly, because they were terrified either the situation or their writing style would identify them to Sarah and incite retaliation.

I cannot violate their confidence. I cannot make them feel unsafe. I can, however, make a safe space for people to anonymously share their experiences. The comments here are open to anyone who feels they have been victimized by Sarah Lyons’ behavior. You can use a fake name and fake email to comment, and no one will be able to tell who you are; not even me. (If you are logged into any WP-affiliated site you may need to click “logout” above the comments box; also do not use your real email if you wish to remain anonymous,  or Gravatar will show your associated icon and profile no matter what name you use.) Share only as much or as little as you wish, removing any identifying information; if you fear your writing style betraying you, do your best to alter it.

The nature of our industry can make many feel that intrusive and unwanted sexual behavior is par for the course for our profession. It’s not. This is still a job, and everyone has a right to have their sexual boundaries respected at work or in private without uninvited information or advances that become not just unwanted, but coercion and assault when power dynamics come into play.

If you wish to speak out, now’s your chance.

I’m listening.

Twenty Notes to the Anxious, Melancholy Writer.

Last night I was talking to a few writer friends about the head-demons that can completely devour any and all will or ability to write. You know those things: those nagging doubts and insecurities and concerns and petty jealousies that get inside your head and turn into a whirlwind of anxiety that completely stymies you and makes you wonder why you should even bother; it can dig pretty deep and create this narrative in your head where you’re basically Carrie covered in pig’s blood while Piper Laurie warbles they’re all going to laugh at you!

Except…no one’s laughing. No one even has any idea you’ve worked yourself up to nearly hyperventilating because of one subtweet or one perceived failure or one unanswered email or one unsent message or one tepid review. You know the poison your brain is swimming in is all crap, but you can’t seem to shut it up, and it’s just dragging you farther and farther away from your stories.

But just because you know it doesn’t mean you believe it when you tell yourself that, again and again. So I ended up writing this out to remind you; writing out the things you already know – not because I think you don’t know them, but because I think maybe, just maybe, a few anxious, melancholy writers out there might need to hear them again. Look at it as a reminder, a validation, an assertion that yes, those cycling, pervasively negative thoughts are wrong. You’ve got this.

You just need to remember to let go of some things, when you can.

1. Stop. Comparing. Yourself. To. Other. Writers.

Just stop, first and foremost. It’s wasted energy and it just builds up into bitterness, because you will always fill in these blanks in your head that make you feel like you’ve somehow fallen short – and that make you resent a stranger for this narrative you’ve constructed in your spiraling thoughts of some kind of tally between you. Just do you. Forget about what other people are doing. Learn when to shut off. Kick the hamster off the wheel.

2. No one else is comparing you to other writers, either.

Anxiety can make you feel like you’re on stage in an auditorium while faceless, looming masses judge you in condemning silence. Not happening. When another author does something great, there is no one who immediately stops and thinks, “Oh. Well. This other author didn’t do that thing. I guess they’re a failure.” You aren’t even on their mind, because the subjects of you and this other author aren’t even connected. In general, no one is watching you and tallying what you perceive as your failures. No one’s even aware of the fact that you feel like a failure. They know you’re an author, you’re there, you have books. That feeling that people are watching and judging is your anxiety projecting your own fears onto other people, not what other people actually think. No one is talking about you behind your back. No one is whispering about your sales rank or reviews or the fact that you might not be in with whomever is considered part of the cool kids’ club this week. They’re more likely to be worrying about potential bone atrophy from a diet of ramen and microwave burritos than judging what you’re doing.

3. You cannot mimic someone else’s success.

Don’t even give yourself the agita of trying to figure out their formula and duplicate it. It won’t work. It’s like trying to duplicate the environmental conditions of a natural disaster just to figure out the direction of the wind at a particular point in time on the south-facing edge of the disaster zone. What you do and what they do are entirely different things, and the serendipity that came together to make the right moment happen for them won’t be the same chain of events that leads to the right moment for you. Rather than trying to figure out how to duplicate them…watch for that one opportunity that could open entirely new doors for you. Keep an eye out for your chance, instead of fussing over missing their chance. Their chance was never yours. It doesn’t work that way. And on that note…

4. Someone else’s success is not your failure, or your loss.

In fact, it only has a very thin fractional amount to do with you, and only in tangential ways. Someone else succeeding in your genre or niche hasn’t taken anything away from you; if anything, it’s paved the way for a wider market for the kind of books you write, and just because X reader reads Y author doesn’t mean they will now not read you because they already have an author they like in that genre. It’s not a quota system. (Except for marginalized authors, it’s often regrettably a quota system, but we’re working to change that.) Readers who read to certain tastes tend to seek out more authors who align with those tastes while providing a new spin on the flavor. Someone else’s success doesn’t mean they stole your audience; it doesn’t mean they stole anything. It just means they cultivated a market that you can now share, and identified a reader base that you can leverage to find your platform.

5. Stop trying to race other authors.

You will never be the first to do something. Ever. The people you’re watching do X ahead of you? Weren’t the first to do it, either; what matters is that you do it your way, in a way that no one’s ever seen before. You will never catch up to other people’s release schedules, ideas, or markets, and why are you trying? Is it a competition thing? Are you trying to prove something? Are you backsliding to #1? Stop it. You’ll find your success when you find your success. The only time limit on it is your lifespan and capacity / ability.

6. Everyone gets rejection letters.

It can seem like for some people everything is coming up roses while you’re just accumulating dead trees stamped with the black ink of your bleeding soul, but just because those authors don’t talk about their rejections and disappointments doesn’t mean they don’t experience them. A lot goes on behind the scenes, even for Big-Name Authors. Contracts fall through. Negotiations fail. Publishers say “I just don’t see strong enough sales in the future to continue this series,” or even “I know you’ve a solid track record, but this story just isn’t right for us.” All the things you hear as a struggling author, all the disappointments you face…they happen to those people who seem to have an open door in publishing, too. Remember that behind the scenes, out of the public eye…they know that ache of opening a letter and seeing a “Thanks, but no thanks,” too. They’re just like you. Rejection letters are a fact whether you sell one book a year or one million, and it’s not as depressing as it seems. It is what it is, and I hope knowing that even BNAs get them stops you from feeling like you’re somehow lesser.

7. Don’t beat yourself up for not making bank on your books.

Even NYT Bestsellers often don’t make a living wage from their books, and generally have a day job and live average middle-class lives. Unfortunately for the majority being an author is not a particularly profitable business, and if you think everyone around you is raking in tons of cash…they’re not. Trust me, they’re not. Focus on increasing your sales for your own sake, but don’t try to live up to some imaginary idea of how much you think other authors must be making. If you don’t already have anxiety, you’ll develop it just angsting over this.

8. Stop minding other people’s business.

While you’re busy gnashing your teeth over how so-and-so is a hack, you could be writing your next book. That kind of mental energy gets deep in your head, and even when you’re not actively focused on it it impacts your ability to actually keep your mind on your writing. You can get in your own way in some really bad ways by sinking into this hole, while the people you’re tearing your hair out over are just happily moving on with their lives. If they’re hacks, why do you give a damn what they’re doing? Ignore them. Go write. Don’t take the love out of what you do by making it about them. Stop checking up on them, too. I know you do it. I know you do it. But they ain’t checking for you, so why you checking for them?

9. At the same time, and this goes doubly for marginalized writers…don’t let anyone steal your voice.

We’re still fighting some major battles over who has the right to tell which stories, and who can do so authentically. We still see privileged authors telling the stories of marginalized people and building their reputation and sales pipeline on that, while those same marginalized people telling their own stories get swept under the rug. Don’t let yourself be swept aside. Don’t be afraid to be loud, be bold, and be confident in the authenticity and strength of your story, and your voice. Speak with an authority that commands attention. And don’t beat yourself up for standing up for yourself, for saying Hey – this is not okay, this is misrepresenting our voices. You haven’t done anything wrong by speaking out.

10. Actually, everyone: don’t be afraid to talk about your work.

I’m ridiculously guilty of this – of being too self-effacing, of not wanting to turn my social media from a personal space into a shill market. It’s true, no one pays attention to an author account that’s nothing but “BUY NOW” spam. But if you’ve built a reader following on social media, they’re there because they love your stories and they want more. They want those little personal moments when you share a random thought about a character they love; they want those little teasers that are like foreplay leading up to getting their hands on your book. They want to feel how excited you are about writing a book, because it informs their excitement about reading it. Talk to your readers, when you have the spoons to do so. Answer fan questions. Let them know they’re fucking special to you, that they matter to you. Send out your fucking newsletter! They signed up for it for a reason! (That was more of a note to self jesus christ why do I never.) Your readers might like you as a person and be entertained by your anecdotes about those f@*$!ng IKEA dowels, but if they love your books it’s not hubris, arrogance, or bragging to give them more of what they love. Do it smartly and make it personal to them; make it for them, and engage with people about your books. You don’t have to be humble. You really don’t. You just have to be smart, human, approachable, self-aware, and not an arsehole (well, unless that’s your brand). Consumers want something to consume, so give them what they came for.

11. Don’t be afraid to ask your friends for help.

Really. I’m terrible about this, too, because I’m always terrified that people will think I have some personal/mercenary motive in the friendship. I know there’s weird politics in interpersonal relationships in publishing; there’s a feeling that people get where they are through their connections, and it’s not 100% wrong, but it’s not so nefarious as that makes it sound. While yes, some shady nepotism and privileged bias does happen…what’s usually happening is people leaning on their community, and their community leaning back. You’ve got your own community; it’s okay to lean. It’s okay to ask, and not feel like you’re somehow taking advantage – as long as when your community asks, you’re there for them as well. Many authors get where they are because their friends lift them up…but they lift their friends up, too. It’s not some conspiracy (we’re speaking generally and not on the deeper issues of privilege that need to be analyzed and addressed industry-wide). It’s just people being supportive. So don’t be afraid to ask for a little support.

12. …and support other people in your genre.

Being an author doesn’t put you in some ivory tower where you no longer talk about books you love. Talk about the books you love, share them, discuss authors who inspire you, authors you admire. It’s not sucking up; it’s building your genre, and building word of mouth for the authors who paved the way for you. Even long-established authors need to hear it now and then, and who knows, they may even talk back. You never know – you might even find out they love your work, too. It’s okay to share what you love, and if people are going to judge you on it? Um, well…they can go the hell back to #8.

13. Read your good reviews.

It’s okay. No, seriously. I don’t believe in stepping on reviewers’ toes by interacting with them on their reviews; to me it’s a sacred space that’s for readers, not for authors, and few reviewers like to feel like authors are helicoptering over them with a judgmental eye for what they’re saying, or even want to interact with authors regarding reviews unless they directly tag them. But. I still read my good reviews, when I need a pick-me-up. It’s okay to sneak onto GoodReads and quietly, secretly devour those 5-star reviews. Bookmark some of the ones that give you the best feels. Remind yourself why you do this; remind yourself that people love what you do. Give yourself a pick-me-up.

14. I hope I don’t have to tell you not to read your negative reviews.

Just don’t do it. Don’t neg yourself like that dude at the bar with the weird head wobble and too much shellac in his hair. You don’t want that. Nobody wants that.

15. Unless…they’re calling your attention to something problematic that hurts marginalized people.

Engaging in a learning discussion in that situation may hurt, but you’ll be a better author for understanding where you went off course. It’s okay to admit being wrong. It’s okay to admit you failed. It is. Your career is not over if you say “I fucked up. I’m sorry. I’m listening, I’m learning, I’ll improve.” If someone calls you out on something problematic, don’t panic. Breathe. Listen. Do better. Stop beating yourself up as some kind of terrible person; it’s not about you anyway, in the end, so just drop those negative feels you’re heaping on yourself and turn that energy into learning from the mistake and listening to the people willing to educate. Once you stop being afraid of being wrong, you’re that much closer to getting it right.

16. Let yourself take breaks.

Like I said, this isn’t a race. Sometimes when you’re not writing, your mind is percolating, subdividing, processing, tessellating, subconsciously putting together all those bits and pieces until suddenly it clicks and you’re ready to write again. Stop beating yourself up for those days to breathe, process, and let your subconscious order your scattered thoughts and ideas. Stop trying to force it. You aren’t a failure if you didn’t write today. And if you’re disabled, please, please protect your spoons. Work at your own pace. Do what you can, when you can. Don’t let ableism and ableist expectations bait you into overextending yourself and draining your capacity. It’s okay to need to stop, step back, and take care of yourself.

17. It’s okay to have boundaries.

With the social aspect now deeply inherent in being an author, there will always be people, both well-meaning and not, who cross your boundaries. It’s okay to be firm in saying “That’s not something I want to discuss.” Whether it’s protecting the people in your private life, protecting your identity and job, reminding people not to cross sexual lines, or just skirting things you don’t want to talk about…it’s okay to drop out of the conversation and just not answer, if it gets uncomfortable and crosses your lines. Change the subject or sign off, if you don’t want to directly point out that someone is making you uneasy. If someone is attacking you, block them or ignore them or chew them out or whatever you feel you need to do to draw your boundaries. Some people are comfortable having very few boundaries in their social engagement as an author; if that works for them, great, but don’t feel like you have to follow their example if it’s not right for you. From the moment you publish your first book you’ll have to set a clear line between the book as a commodity and yourself as a person who produces that commodity, rather than something to be consumed for others’ pleasure yourself. How much of yourself you’re willing to give in audience engagement is at your discretion…and you aren’t a terrible person for asking people to respect that, or reinforcing the lines when they get blurred.

18. Nearly everyone else is socially awkward, too.

While there are some people in publishing who sail through social interactions with either consummate grace or a well-warded shield of DGAF…most other people are trying just as hard as you are not to make complete and total idiots of themselves. They’re fretting over whether they came on too strong, or working up the nerve to talk to someone, or wondering if they stuck their foot in their mouth…just like you. And if you think they think poorly of you after a social interaction? They’re more likely thinking poorly of themselves, and rather than thinking they don’t like you, they’re probably worrying about whether or not you like them. When in a crowd of people who spend the majority of their time wrapped up in their heads talking to imaginary people, you’re going to end up with a uniquely socialized group full of raggedy edges trying to figure out how they fit together. We’re the puzzle pieces with Deadpool’s curvy edges, but please don’t ask if we’ll stick it in your a –

19. …ahem. Moving on…grudges are not the end of the world, or the end of you.

Sometimes conflict is going to happen. It’s inevitable. People who tell stories for a living tend to be unsurprisingly good at stumbling their way into drama sooner or later, usually with each other. You’re going to burn a bridge here and there. There’ll be incompatible personalities. Misunderstandings. Missteps. But it’s over. It’s done. Whomever you had the conflict with is not going to impact your future as an author; they’re going to go their way, while you go yours. There will always be things you wish you said; always be things you wish you said better. Always be misunderstandings you want to clear up, corrections you want to make. Old hurts that still pain on a quiet day when you thoughts start to drift. But the best thing you can do for yourself is let it go. You aren’t the only one who’s had some kind of falling out with someone in the industry. You haven’t been black-balled. You aren’t a pariah. It’s pretty normal, happens every day…and yet somehow the wheel still keeps turning, the machine still keeps churning, and you’ve still got all the other friends and connections you’ve made. And once the dust settles…you’re okay. So let the grudge go.

20. Social media is not everything.

It’s important, but it’s just the foam on the surface of a deep, deep sea. Social media can be fun – like, enough fun that you forget you’re supposed to be working because someone just posted a video of Drumpf’s eyebrow detaching and crawling off his face. It’s a nonstop party. It’s also nonstop drama, headache, and stress, and sometimes it’s hard to separate out and remember that it’s a professional tool as much as it’s a social one. And there’s the matter of figuring out how to build a following, too; having an engaged following is better than having a large following (though having a large, engaged following is still ideal). But remember that everything that goes on on social media is transient; it’s short-term moments, while the process of creating a book has a long lifecycle. In the end social media only carries so much weight in that lifecycle, and while it’s valuable for making connections and engaging with your readers and discussing trends, it can also be distracting, expose you to negativity and doubt, and enable you to feed your anxieties, including worrying what people think of your social media persona – worrying that people are judging your content, your follower/friend count, your BNA count, your following to followed ratio, etc…when they’re not.

It’s okay to shunt it to the back of your mind. Stop checking engagement metrics, counting RTs and faves, watching who did or didn’t RT or share or Like or comment. Excuse yourself when you need to. Your work is in the writing; your social media is just the public face you put on that, not the core of your author career. You don’t have to treat it like a popularity contest, and even if you do…that’s not a contest you need to win. Stop worrying about your social media popularity. Just do you. Do your books. Be there when you want to be; don’t when you don’t. Forced social media engagement is worse than none at all when it comes to building an authentic online presence, so just let yourself stop worrying about it, and stop treating it like the sole key to finding your niche and creating your career. It’s only one tool in an arsenal. Use it when it’s relevant; set it aside when it’s not, and don’t give yourself anxiety over plunging deeper into the social sphere than you can handle on any given day.

Feeling any better? No? Yes? Purple? Did I just put worries and doubts in your head that you didn’t have before?

Then go back.

Read it again.

And remember that you’re not alone in these doubts. Other authors are flailing just as much as you are.

But one way or another, we all find a way to muddle through. Tell your demons to shut the fuck up. Turn the music up loud enough to drown them out. Type so fast they can’t keep up. Because even if you think you don’t…

You’ve got this.

Where I’ve Been: Life, Death, Books, Ghost Stories, and Road Trips with Cats

Wow. So when I said “kick me if you see me on social media before May,” I didn’t anticipate being gone until the end of July/beginning of August. But I’m…back-ish? Yes. Back-ish. I’m at least going to be lurking around a bit more and occasionally randomly showering people on social media with love. But…holy hells, life kind of went a little off the rails these last few months. And because I roll like that, I’m going to break it down in reverse order from the title, because the title reads better that way but explaining this way makes more sense.

…

In my head, anyway.

This is basically four blog posts in one, categorized for easy topical skimming. Hush and buckle in.

Hi.

GHOST STORIES AND ROAD TRIPS WITH CATS

So if you follow me on Facebook, you may remember a while back I was agonizing over needing to move because state self-employment taxes in my current locale were bloody well killing me. I had wanted Seattle, as many of my lifelong friends are there, but it didn’t seem like a viable option financially considering my lease ended on May 31st and my work life had just gone through a significant slowdown and there just wasn’t enough time to bankroll a cross-country move. I had two options: renew for another six months and save a stable cushion to move, or pick somewhere else without state self-employment tax and move somewhere cheaper.

It turned out neither of those options really happened.

My landlord told me I couldn’t do a six-month lease. It was a year or nothing. I was not staying another year in Murderville, Illinois–also known as Southside Chicago, which is actually home to a very large percentage of lovely people who are disproportionately terrorized and murdered by a very small percentage of extremely violent people. Yes, Chicago. I know some of you guessed already when I was being cagey about where I lived; I had my reasons, mostly involving people whose names belong on a restraining order. Those reasons are now defunct, because for the past couple of months and for the foreseeable future, I am now a happy resident of Seattle, Washington.

Yep. I chose “nothing.” Because my best friend from Seattle, L, happened to be in Chicago right when my lease was up, for on-the-job training. So I haggled for money people owed me, packed up most of my belongings and shipped them cheaply (and quickly) via Amtrak Freight, gave all my furniture to my housekeeper and neighbors, shoved everything else in the back of this little fucking Smurfberry of a rental car, wrestled (and I do mean wrestled–the contortions Beni did to keep from getting in) Mercutio and Benvolio into a little custom luxury cage, and hit the road. L and I drove over 2,000 miles in three days. And on this trip, I learned:

Beni will shamelessly snatch my goddamn braids if he’s pissed over being in the cage too long. Little fucker reached through the bars, stretched past the seat headrest, claw-punched me right in the goddamned skull, then yanked my tail until my head slammed back against the seat.


You do not know the face of death until you’ve experienced a litterbox bomb not two feet from your head in a packed, enclosed compact car.


Hotel stops must be scheduled around when the yowling starts, or there will be hell to pay.


Illinois makes it very expensive to leave the state. The number of fucking tolls we went through was ridiculous.


Altitude edema is a thing, and I-90 through Montana ranges about 3,000-6,000 feet above sea level for very long stretches. My legs went from skinny chicken to giant redwood over the course of a few hours, and stayed that way for a week.


There is not a single person darker than mayonnaise from the western Wisconsin border to the eastern Washington state line.


The sky in Wyoming is very big. For the first time in my life I saw the full curvature of the sky, stretching from horizon to horizon, and it was lovely. The sunsets were ethereal, the clouds strange and otherworldly and lit from within with ruby sunfire.


I am very frightening to people in Montana. So frightening they can’t decide if they want to shy away from me, staring in shock…or follow me around grocery stores and gas stations waiting for me to steal something. I have never seen L so pissed and ready to shank someone, with how people were reacting to me no matter how pleasant, polite, and harmless I was. While I love my friend for being so protective, there were a few moments where I had to drag L out bodily to prevent that powder keg from going off. Then again, I also had to bodily remove L from a Wal-Mart in Chicago just for the sheer fact that impulse control was becoming a problem in wondering if we’d be arrested or just kicked out if L deliberately knocked over the thirty-foot display stack of toilet paper rolls.


Okay. So there was a lot of bodily removing L from trouble, period.


Then again, L had to practically physically stop me from setting fire to the art installation teepees at every rest stop in South Dakota, because FUCK YOU, that’s why. Unless those art installations were designed and built by an actual Native person, fuck you. (Someone please tell me they were. Or my next road trip will involve charges for vandalism and destroying public property.)


Don’t ever stay at a small-town Comfort Inn. Not unless you want a clusterfuck that results in having to dispute nearly $300 in fraudulent credit card charges.


Panera has a surprising range of options for accommodating L’s food allergies.


WHAT THE FUCK IS WALL DRUG


Someone actually paid for religious shaming billboards. Little mini-things posted along the roadside with hand-painted bibles on them, with grim messages such as “The wages of sin is death” and one other one I can’t remember but basically amounted to “FORNICATORS MUST DIE.” And then there was the giant accusatory abortion guilt billboard. Amazingly, though, not one Trump billboard. Plenty of “OBAMA SUCKS” bumper stickers, though.


I’ve never seen low carpeting mist roll in across the land and through creepy spindly trees before; it’s always been firmly slotted in my head as a horror movie effect. But we saw it while driving through Wisconsin at twilight, thick fingers of it reaching for and obscuring the road, and jesus fuck that shite is terrifying when you’re the only car on a suddenly deserted highway.


L sings. All the fucking time. ALL THE FUCKING TIME. L sings conversations. L even sings when angry! I do not know how I came to call someone this fucking perky my best friend, but bloody goddamned hell, I felt like the hero in Enchanted. At least I was saved from the threat of the Wicked soundtrack for the whole 2,000 miles when it turned out the rental didn’t have a CD player.


In South Dakota they don’t teach you to flush public toilets, but they do teach you the alphabet, as evidenced by the giant “KKK” scratched on the toilet seat of the men’s in a Dairy Queen. Look at you; don’t you spell like a big boy? Yes you do. Yes, you do.


In Montana, if you walk into a Starbuck’s while brown in a town with no less than six “OBAMA SUCKS” bumper stickers in a three-block radius, everyone will stop and stare at you. The blonde woman in line in front of you will jump away like you just goosed her when she glances back and sees you, even though there’s five feet between you and her, you’ve made not even the slightest indication that you might touch her or even acknowledge her, and you’re looking at the menu and not even aware she exists. When her violent reaction causes you to jerk in surprise and flinch back while blinking in confusion, she will scurry to put more space between you. The elderly cashier who was all smiles for her will become graven stone for you, speak in clipped tones, and rudely dismiss or talk over your polite greetings and questions (I’m sorry, dude, I can’t tell at a glance who has active chip readers and who doesn’t, some businesses have them installed but don’t use them and either way I hates them, precioussss). While you and the blonde woman both wait for your orders, she will stare at you constantly with a look of sneering horror while you pointedly mind your own business, sit as far away from her as possible, stare anywhere else, and try not to visibly display how increasingly uncomfortable you are. She will also start skip-running with nervous little glances when you leave moments after her and it turns out your cars are parked side-by-side, only to make a disgusted sound and stare at you when she realizes you’re going to your car, not following her. No, lady. No. I’m aware that inherently it is possible for any man to be a threat and you can’t know who is or isn’t safe, so you need to protect yourself. But in a daylit, well-trafficked public place where I’m not even engaging with you in any way and I’m doing my best to ignore your existence and keep my distance and protect myself by leaving as quickly as possible and avoiding conflict and/or confrontation? No. Just…no. I promise my brownness does not make it dangerous to be in a large, busy, well-lit cafe at the same time as me. I promise I’m not going to assault you with my froofy, sugar-filled, whip-cream-frothing iced pseudo-coffee drink. I’m also not certain why you seemed convinced that out of all the people in that Starbuck’s, both male and female, I must have singled you out, unless it’s by the sheer coincidence that you were the person in line ahead of me when I came in, and the general social mechanics of queues mandate that I stand somewhere behind you in an orderly fashion and wait my turn within our respective bubbles of personal space–where I can promise you my issues with physical contact make my bubble of inviolable personal space much larger than the one engendered by your issues with breathing near a brown person.


In Montana, you will also see a great number of strange collections of shanty houses on the sides of the roads, vaguely imitating a town and yet hauntingly empty. They are brightly colored, and if you pull off the road with the intention of stopping at a convenience store or gas station, you will see not a living soul and yet feel a great sense of being watched, possibly through the eyes of a garishly painted rubber mask hiding something that could never have been called a face. Do not get out of your vehicle. Drive on. Slowly, so the noise does not draw them. Softly. Softly. Do not wake the quiet ones.


Driving through green hills in the dead of night, dotted with the red lights of dormant wind turbines, will lull you into a strange state in which you are entirely certain you’ve slipped through a dimensional rift and fallen into some strange Lovecraftian world where those lights are the lidless eyes of drowsing, dreamless gods, their slow-breathing shoulders humping in black silhouettes against a starless sky, the trees naught but strange follicles bristling from their hoary hides.


If you stare at the moving wind turbines long enough, their blades become the pointed and aerodynamic legs of disembodied android women joined at a single tapering waist, spread on uncanny display, forming and breaking pairs over and over again with each turn and asking, as you stare between their gaping, rotating thighs, why their chests and hearts and heads and brains have been cut away to meld them into this nightmare of metal and purposeless voyeurism without autonomy or will.


Have I mentioned that hours and hours of monotonous highway will take my brain to some completely fucked places?


Seriously, fuck Montana.

The highlight of the trip came at the very end, though. It was a working trip for me; I just took work with me and tapped away on my laptop when it was L’s turn to drive. On the home stretch, just over the Washington border, I had to do a client call at midnight. (He was in France, so it was actually a reasonable hour for him.) So we pulled off onto a little exit to do the call so my signal wouldn’t be cutting in and out as we moved. We parked. Cut the engine and headlights. Everything went pitch black. No highway lights, not even reflectors. No other cars. Just dead, smothering blackness, the moon vanished behind the accusing spears of the treetops, the sky lightless and cold, the silence thick with something trembling that felt like unvoiced screams. We stared at each other in the dark, nothing visible but a faint reflection off the whites of our eyes, the whisper-glow of the dash, and the otherworldly blue light coming from my laptop charger’s power indicator.

“I…I’m going to turn the headlights back on, okay?” L said in a small voice, and I swallowed.

“Okay.”

L switched the headlights on.

Directly in front of us, facing us on the opposite side of the little feeder road, was an empty car that had not been there before. We’d heard nothing. Seen no headlights. But there it was, dull silver and skewed off onto the shoulder. The driver’s side door was open. On our side of the road, off in the grass right before the tree line, was…something. Someone. Tall enough to be a man, but strangely blocky; vaguely humanoid in shape, but somehow wrong. I caught something that looked like plaid flannel and maybe a cap and dark, enormous, reflective spaces that I tell myself had to be sunglasses, but it was mostly a white, tattered mass that I couldn’t quite focus on in the flashing dark. Later the only thing L and I would agree on clearly was that it looked like someone or something wrapped in bandages. It moved toward us. We stared for half a second…and then got the fuck out of there, flooring the gas and tearing out, gasping “What the fuck? What the fuck. Oh my god, what the fuck.”

Only we weren’t out of the woods yet–literally. We couldn’t get back onto I-90. We had to follow this little feeder road deeper into the trees. This feeder road with no lights, no reflectors, no road signs except a single one-way marker; just dense forest and pitch blackness and, as we drove onward, so many empty cars. Just…cars, parked on the side of the road, deserted, appearing within the circle of our headlights and then disappearing as the light swept past. No signs of people. Other drivers. Other roads. Houses. Nothing. And though it was a one-way road, we were seriously considering doing a U-turn and going back the wrong way, because this was not okay. Once, we saw faint flickering lights like torchlight through the trees, orange against a backdrop of dusty moonlight. Then it was just the dark again, and us, and the silence.

After a few minutes the feeder road looped back around and became an on-ramp. By the time we made it back to I-90 my palms were cold, my skin prickling. L’s eyes were wide enough to see the whites all around. We didn’t talk for half an hour, because we just wanted to put as many miles between us and that as possible…and honestly, we didn’t know what to say. Like saying it would make it real; like saying it would reveal one of us was seeing things, while the other saw nothing at all. And when we finally did talk about it, neither of us were sure what we experienced. Just…bandages, and a sense of powerful, creeping dread.

Bandages.

Two months later, all I have to say is “bandage man” and L just goes “NO. NOPE. NO THANK YOU” and walks away.

Fucking Slenderman level shite.

Here. Have some lovely photos I took while hiking through Lincoln Park and along Puget Sound a few weeks ago, to dispel that fucking bad juju.

 

 

So. Um. That was my trip. Beyond that, I love Seattle. I’m renting a lovely apartment very close to Lake Washington, with stunning views of the lake; the apartment has a private entrance, gorgeous French doors, enormous picture windows, a private patio opening onto a lushly greened backyard, and forest all around. I also only share the building with one other person, as it’s actually a house that’s been converted to apartments; she has the upstairs unit, I have down, and we meet in the middle now and then over mail or just dropping in to say hi. It’s the autonomy and privacy of independent living combined with the security and comfort (for both of us) of having someone else in the building if we need them. Her name’s A, by the way. A is pretty amazing; she may also be a 12-year-old boy masquerading as a 47-year-old woman, considering the spate of giggles when I said “I don’t think 86 inches is enough” when working out curtain rods and the outright howling when we were discussing an aversion to the texture of peaches and I said, completely unthinkingly, “I don’t like to lick fur.” (Don’t tell my last girlfriend that.) There’s also D, a pretty chill guy whom A is subletting a spare room to in the short term; although he’s hardly ever actually around, he’s pretty nifty. Most people in Seattle have been pretty nifty, and I think I’ll love it here–not the least because I’m close to my friends now, although sometimes getting N out of Enumclaw is like pulling teeth and it disturbs me just how much B’s van always smells like fresh gasoline and I’m pretty sure we’re gonna die in it, though I’ll take a fiery gasoline combustion over her nagging me about trying to meet someone yet again. (My housekeeper does too. And you have not been nagged about your love life until you’ve been nagged by a Filipina mom.)

And I must be out of my mind, getting up every morning at 5am to go running with L.

We’re totally chasing pokemon on our usual jogging trail, by the way.

And L refuses to leave each morning without a hug. So much touching. Ugh.

No photos of the apartment yet, because I’m repainting it next month. Right now it’s this disturbing creamy golden shade somewhere between pastel mustard and goldenrod baby diarrhea, and that’s got to go. I’ll share when it’s a better color, and properly decorated, and all my boxes are unpacked; I’m really looking forward to getting my patio set up with a fire pit and wind chimes and patio furniture, if I can ever find a set that doesn’t cost more than the downpayment on a small house. Seriously, why is even ugly, barely-functional patio furniture so expensive?

I also don’t have any photos of the cats giving us the Eye of Sauron from the back of the car, because L is a master at Vehicle Tetris and they kind of got boxed in…so have a photo of them settled in happily and dozing, instead.

BOOKS

So…you may have noticed in my little sneak time on Twitter that there’s been stuff going on with my bookishness. Like my new pen name, Xen Sanders. No, it’s not my real name. Yes, it’s very close. Yes, I’m still writing as Cole McCade. No, it’s not a cishet vs. LGBTQIA split; it’s more a contemporary vs. SFF/horror split for clear genre differentiation. Yes, it’s why I changed my screen names and website domain (with all the old content ported over, plus shiny new things like a selection from my art portfolio and a single page consolidating the stuff you can read for free). There’s more info and explanations in the FAQ here, to keep this long-arse post from getting any longer.

But if you missed it…in September, my first LGBTQIA paranormal novel as Xen Sanders, SHATTERPROOF, is releasing from the lovely Riptide Publishing. You can add it to GoodReads here, if you’re into things like, you know, M/M and vodou and fae and bisexual black heroes dealing with mental illness while falling in love with damaged prettyboys; you can also preorder from the Riptide website, and read an excerpt online. I, for one, am in love with my fucking cover. You see so many POC books, even from major New York publishers, get carelessly done, shite covers…and then Riptide goes and puts all this amazing work into producing a gorgeous, striking, compelling professional cover that took my breath away the moment I saw it. I also really loved writing this book, not in the least because I’m a sadistic arsehole who enjoys making his beta readers cry.

I’ve also signed another contract with Riptide for UNRAVEL, another paranormal standalone set in the same universe as SHATTERPROOF. So things are looking pretty busy, book-wise; for the next 6-8 months, really, I’m kind of packed with releases. While I was away I did a lot of hardcore writing. I finished THE FOUND (Crow City #2), Willow and Priest’s story; that’s coming in a couple of weeks, but you can add it to Goodreads here. I wrote 8-9 short stories, many of which will be creeping into a collection I’m working on for a fun pet project. I have two Entangled Publishing releases between now and early 2017, one as Cole McCade, one as Xen Sanders; I’m about halfway done with THE SAVED (Priest’s POV novella in the same theme as THE FALLEN), and have made significant inroads on THE GIRL WITH THE STARS ON HER SKIN; I’ve started WAKING and UNTIL I FIND YOU (neither of which I’m ready to talk about yet); I’m also considering self-publishing SUBHUMAN, my enormous epic-length behemoth of a sci-horror and one of my babies that I’ve been working on for years; we’ll see. I may also look into this whole, you know, literary agent thing. When I have something worth submitting, anyway, that isn’t already slated for a publisher or something else.

And…I discovered that if I write in 15-minute sprints alternating around work and other things, I can churn out some 10,000-15,000 words a day.

The problem is…generally about 60% of it is shite.

Pure shite.

But that’s still a nice chunk I get to keep without deleting in a mad frenzy of “omg wtf is this what was I thinking,” and it makes for writing at a decent clip without feeling like I’m sucking the fun out of something I love by dragging myself through it for hours on end. That was kind of how I wrote THE FOUND; sprinting through 10k at a time, going back and cutting the 6k of it that was shite, filling in the blanks with something better, then doing another sprint, rinse and repeat.

So. Taking a break from social media was good for me, to get back to reading and writing and just…living in the words. I’m hoping for nothing but good things from here on out. I’m really excited about all the stuff I have coming out after this, as well as a couple of joint projects I’m working on with friends.

DEATH

I was less excited when my father died this past April.

And by less excited I mean completely fucked up.

I…do not deal with death well. I don’t encounter it very often, honestly. People in my family are ridiculously long-lived. That and I’m hugely estranged from most of my family, so I…don’t even know most of them. Like, ask me their names and I just don’t even know, so if/when they die I usually don’t hear about it and it has little impact other than general human loss because I never even knew they lived. I have siblings I’ve never met and am technically not supposed to know about. Yeah. It’s weird. I vaguely remember my great-grandmother dying at age 109, while I was barely a sproglet–much too young to really understand what was going on or feel the impact of it. An uncle died not much later, and though I remember him fondly that kind of got folded into the childhood murk of my great-grandmother. And then a few years ago, my grandmother died and my whole world fell apart; it was the first personal death I’d experienced in my adult life and may even have been a contributing factor in ending my marriage, because grief (among other things) pushed me to a break point that helped erode away at my ex’s abusive hold on me. There is a very small group of people in my family that I have tried so fucking hard to stay in contact with; whom I love more than reason; who define family for me, no matter how broken and abusive the rest of my family is. My grandmother was one of those people.

My dad was one of the others.

And to be honest, I still haven’t come to grips with it. In some ways I lost him a short forever ago; as his Alzheimer’s got worse he forgot me, forgot a lot of people who love him…and my stepmother began to isolate him more and more. He’s the reason I wrote Celeste’s father in A SECOND CHANCE AT PARIS: to have what I could never have with my father, living vicariously through the book. He wasn’t perfect. A lot of times he wasn’t even really there. We had a lot of unresolved issues. But there was part of me that hoped that one day…one day…

Now that day will never come.

And I will never, ever know why.

Because no one told me he was dead until well after the fact.

I found out on May 1st because my mother, whom I usually refuse to answer the phone for, left me an urgent message asking if my stepmother had contacted me. My stepmother doesn’t even know my phone number anymore, and she changed all of theirs, including my little brother’s cell, so no one could contact them. No one even knows where they’ve been living, other than somewhere secluded near my hometown. But I was worried, so I called my mother back. Over the course of the call my mother prodded and goaded me with hints and insinuations until I finally broke down and, while on the phone with her, googled my father’s name plus “obituary.”

And that’s how I found out he’d been dead for eight days, buried for four. A google search, and a fucking online obituary. I don’t know how he died. Why he died. I don’t know what’s happened to that part of my family. I wasn’t even listed as his son in the obituary. I don’t know what happened to his will or his belongings, though I can hope the will included provisions for my little brother’s college education. My mother’s cold, shrugging comments about “well, that sucks for you” and the usual callousness that fuels the hate machine of her life didn’t really help the shock of the moment. Since then I’ve dug, I’ve poked, I’ve prodded, but without a trip to New Orleans I doubt I’m going to get any real answers as to cause of death or the general state of his last days. He’s just…gone, and swept under the rug like something that shouldn’t be seen in polite company, something that needs to be thrown out.

Worse, I had to call my grandparents and tell them they outlived yet another of their children. One son committed suicide well before I was born. One died in an accident. And now Dad…and that’s it. They’ve buried all of their children, except they didn’t even get to bury him because they had to find out after the fact just like I did.

I sort of went through the five stages. I know I sure as hell went through a fuckton of anger. My friends helped–listening, offering support, giving me permission to feel all the awful things I was feeling when I always beat myself up for giving in to my emotions or not being able to repress them. I went through a weird fixative grief-anxiety phase where I couldn’t stand to eat anything that couldn’t be classified as some kind of sandwich. I blamed myself for not finding a way to get to him when, weeks before his death, I started worrying about him, as if by following up on that intuition I’d have been able to save his life when logically, I know it doesn’t work that way. I went through a lot of shite, but I’m not one hundred percent sure I’ve really dealt with it. No, I know I haven’t.

I haven’t been able to cry for my father.

It’ll start, and then something…some fucked up part of me, some part of my damage, chokes it back and buries it under all the goddamned emotional repression that makes up my life. I couldn’t even cry when I was sorting through old stuff while packing and, over the course of a few hours, came across a birthday card from my dead grandmother, a watch my father had given me, and a condolence card from the vet who cremated Tybalt. That triple combo fucking wrecked me, but still…no fucking tears.

I cried over my fucking cat. I don’t know why I can’t get it out for my father.

I loved him. I love him; his memory isn’t dead. He deserves my tears, and I can’t fucking get them out. My eyes are burning writing this, but I know it won’t happen. And I’m just going to get angry with myself trying, so…moving on.

LIFE

So that’s me. I moved, I wrote books, I sold books, my dad died. I started doing CPRW and executive career coaching work full-time; I used to do that a long time ago when I was first starting off as a professional writer, and it’s high-paying work that I could take with me from Chicago to Seattle with no break in income or need to look for a job – though pretty soon I might just break away from the company I’m contracting for and start my own independent business. But for right now, between all the upheaval and rapid change plus a two-hour time zone shift, I’m still trying to get settled in and find my equilibrium until I feel real again, instead of displaced and trying to find my niche.

And speaking of my niche…well…there’s the whole thing with social media, and why I left in the first place. I’ve been back longer than I let on. Watching. Watching people kill each other; watching people hate each other; watching people be shitty; watching people fight back by being wonderful. Watching as many people spread the good message as there were people spreading hateful ones. Watching the world come crumbling down, and watching so many beautiful, brave humans try to lift the broken pieces up on shoulders trembling with the strength of their power.

I just haven’t said anything, because anything I would have to say would be trivial in the enormity of it all. I silently held my love for people’s bravery, and remained wordless in my respect for the dead.

I don’t want to be silent anymore. But I don’t want to let this consume me the way it did before, either, especially when so much of what was consuming me was not just global and political, but personal and interpersonal.

So where does that leave me? I’m not really sure. I’ll likely start edging onto social media daily again, just to peek and see what people are doing, but I’m not sure about being as present as I was before, or as involved in social politics. I may listen, learn, but not speak as often; speaking and feeling as if I wasn’t being heard, plus seeing so many minority voices drowned out by privileged voices speaking and being lauded as if they’re authorities on minority matters, was part of what was fueling my frustration. Plus…I’m realizing that I think I will always be awkward with people. I know a lot of you don’t think of me as awkward, but you don’t know what’s going on in the brain meats with me; you don’t see the part of my brain that views every conversation as me bothering/imposing myself on the other person, or how almost every interaction is an exercise in not fucking it up while trying to like everyone and realizing that’s not possible. You can’t like everyone, and you can’t beat yourself up for not liking everyone. The most you can do is try to be kind to people whether you like them or not, and remember that when you try to be everyone’s friend, all you end up doing is stretching yourself thin and stomping all over your own boundaries.

I can do kindness. But there’s also a difference between being generally kind and forcing myself to be social even when I’m out of spoons because I feel like I have to for some bizarre reason, when there’s really no reason at all and my authorial career will not end if I’m off Twitter for a few days here and there. (Twitter, I’m looking at you and your engagement metrics. Stop that. Stop playing off my fascination with numbers and trends.)

While taking time off to distance myself, I also realized that sometimes you just…can’t escape identity issues in friendships. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about that, too; about how so many of my online relationships are either incredibly, overwhelmingly positive or incredibly, overwhelmingly toxic, and how much of that has informed my social media exhaustion and the corresponding anxiety and depression when constantly pulled between the two extremes. I’ve been trying to have self-awareness about my own role in that, as shite doesn’t happen in a vacuum and Occam’s Razor points to a single common denominator. But I’m also looking at other contributing factors, especially when trying to flail my way through a queer community where I often feel like the Other–tokenized, mostly unwanted save for as representation by grudgingly obligatory invitation, alone, treading where I don’t belong, even a problem for some because they feel they shouldn’t have to worry about others’ marginalizations or inclusiveness in what they consider a queer safe space (you know, kind of like people who think it’s okay to make misogynistic jokes when only in the company of men, or racist jokes when only in the company of white people–because in their ideal safe space they don’t have to care if their privilege is problematic, deal with the inconvenience of of others’ humanity, or recognize the underlying privilege and bias inherent in dismissing lack of inclusiveness as something they shouldn’t have to care about; these are the people for whom social awareness and respect aren’t natural and human, but a burden they wish they didn’t have to carry while at the same time wanting brownie points for how good they are at it while avoiding any self-awareness at all about the bias inherent in who they surround themselves with).

I often feel as if people both covet my approval for being woke, but at the same time dismiss my personhood when it comes to the potential to form friendships and relationships that have nothing to do with giving them brownie points. It’s this strange, frustrating, entirely maddening experience (flames, FLAMES ON THE SIDE OF MY FACE), a shifting balance where I’m both greater and lesser but either way, never really a fully-realized person to them; just a notch on a tally, or some strange kind of competition for…I don’t even know what. Validation? Culture? I don’t know. Though this blog post, “On Racism and Competitiveness in Queer Spaces,” was lovely and insightful and gave me a lot to think about when it comes to certain dynamics I’ve run into on multiple occasions, and eventually extracted myself from; it’s a familiar experience that’s almost as common for men as it is for women, and often happens in mixed-gender groups as well. It didn’t really give me any solutions, but it did give me something to relate to regarding a few of my recent experiences with friendships. So that’s something.

Actually, it’s a lot. When others’ experiences give you grounding to stop blaming yourself for other people’s shite behavior, it makes a big difference. And that’s kind of a bad pattern of mine. Someone does something hurtful or cruel or privileged, I say “this is not okay,” and then I immediately fall into blaming myself for it–for being bothered, for saying anything about it, for being difficult enough to ask for human consideration and decency. I let them blame me, too, and often accept their justifications and how they punch down and trivialize and railroad and gaslight and rationalize and dismiss to maintain their privilege, just so I don’t rock the boat again when that voice in my head is already saying wrong, bad, you’re not allowed, you crossed a line and used up your allotment of humanity just for speaking up–plus the other voice that says every time you tell someone in a position of power or influence in publishing “ouch, this hurts, that’s not okay” you’re sinking your career a little deeper into the muck. Sometimes I’ll take anything to break that self-blame cycle; it helps. I’ve got more than enough people punching down in my direction; I don’t need to keep punching myself, too.

I’ve also realized I have a bizarre talent for bringing out people’s inner shitemonster. Like, whatever they’ve been sitting on comes out around me, the perfect public face disappearing to leave this repressed, festering mess of everything from an obsessive stalker mentality to overwhelmingly self-satisfied privilege to outright racism, and the gamut in between–with increasingly erratic and at times explosive behavior that leaves me feeling like I just got hit in a drive-by when things go crashing sideways and plowing right into a burning, smoldering landfill, possibly ignited by the aforementioned flames on the side of my face. Somehow simply by existing in a conjoined space with them I just…amplify what may have been only tendencies before, and I’m not sure how.

That’s really not a talent I’d like to be remembered for, and it’s made me increasingly cagey about how I interact with new people and how far I’ll let that interaction go.

But it’s also made me cognizant of a need to just…let go. I have trouble doing that, when people are awful and I know it’s not wise to confront them on it but there’s that part of my brain that just agonizes over leaving that hanging out in the ether. My brain will replay so many things I wish I could say to them; things I feel like I should say to them, even if I doubt it’ll change anything and will just open me up to more stress and conflict and the delightful and always real chance that I’ll be the bad guy for saying “Hey, your privilege and assumptions are not just incorrect, but actively causing harm.” Woo fucking hoo anxiety disorder. And I’m just…too tired to put myself in that situation. So rather than choosing between my brain gnawing at me with things unsaid or other people gnawing at me with things very much said, I’m learning to take another route and just…let it go. (DON’T YOU DARE START SINGING THAT SONG.) Whether it’s letting go of the situation, or letting go of the damaging person. It’s not my job to wake them up, especially if they’re convinced they’re already woke, and I can’t take that on myself at the cost of my own emotional well-being and energy. If my pride has to take a blow or two knowing those people are incapable of seeing me without the filter of their privilege…so be it. I have too much to do to devote this much of my brainspace to people who can’t get out from under themselves.

IN CONCLUSION

Back on track…what much of this boils down to is that I’ve been hurting wishing I had somewhere to belong, but distance has made me content with knowing how to just be. I’m fucking fabulous, babies. Y’all ain’t gotta be just like me for me to know that. And honestly, fuck “community.” Community has too much potential to turn into cliques, and then the exclusionary behavior starts all over again with who’s in, who’s out, who’s one of us, who’s one of them. I’m not here for that. I’m here to write books. But more than that, I’m here for people. Individual people with deeply personal loves and hates and needs and pains, with unique passions and intersectionalities and paths and voices–which every last one of you just so happens to be.

So. Hey. I’m here for you, babies.

*laughs* And I don’t really know where I’m going with that. Having time to think and step back has given me my energy back, has refreshed me, but it hasn’t given me solutions. Maybe because there aren’t any solutions. Maybe because it’s just a matter of taking it day by day, and not trying to carry other people’s emotional baggage on top of my own. Just respect their boundaries, ask to have mine respected, avoid people who can’t manage something that basic, and take things as they come. You do you, I do me, and let’s try not to be shite to each other in the process. And, as always:

Don’t start none, won’t be none.

I think that’s going to be my best path forward. That, and keeping my distance from certain people, so I don’t end up stuck like this 24/7 again:

Unless I run into those people while running around playing Pokemon GO. Fuck distance, let’s go trounce my local gym because fuck you Team Valor that gym belongs to Team Mystic.**

Fucking Pokemon GO.

Fucking Wigglytuff using up my goddamned Great Balls.***

Dammit.

 

**I am aware of the irony of saying I’m not here for community “us vs. them” shite and then immediately stanning for my P-GO team right after. Hush it.

***Not one word out ya mouf about Great Balls. Not. One.

Fuuuck. AKA: Goddammit, Blogging Again. AKA: This Mess Done Got Me All Fucked Up. AKA: Shutting Off.

(tw: very brief mention of CSA and abuse)

I started writing this on Friday, but gave myself the weekend to think about it, to decide whether or not I should post it, whether or not I want to make this choice. But I think I need to, so I can start Monday with a clean slate. Even if I'm fucking weirding myself out. Three blog posts in one month? I swear I'm not a pod person. I am, however, fucking up my website migration, since I'd already ported all my blog content over three posts ago and fixed everything to match the new layout. I'm not doing this right. I'm really not.

What I am doing, however, is thinking a lot.

And about all the wrong things.

I had a lot of time to mull things over this weekend. A lot of time to write this and fine-tune it and make a decision, too, as I realized something:

I no longer live inside my books.

Normally, my books are my escape. An often grimdark escape from an equally grimdark reality, but it's my grimdark where I control that darkness and use it to explore beautiful and hurtful things, and where I and people like me get to exist as ourselves instead of colonized versions of ourselves. My books are a world that's almost constantly occupying my mind; characters bicker and banter inside my head. A single song can inspire entire cinematic scenes played out in realistic detail that will then evolve into some new plot twist or moment of emotion pivotal to connecting with a character. There's always a subroutine going in my head even when I'm doing other things, this wetware machine computing permutations and tesselations and fractal iterations until I used to be able to store entire complex interlaced plotlines in my head without needing to take notes, and they were always evolving until they were ready to fall into place in the right configuration.

But lately, that machine has short-circuited. Fried. The wires have crossed. My internal operating system has been compromised by insidious malware that's taken me out of my world and put me in a place where I can barely function at all, and writing feels like something I once knew how to do until someone went and uninstalled the program.

I could blame it on the fact that I'm not actively writing a book right now, because I'm buried in edits. I could blame it on the fact that I've picked up enough freelance work lately that I'm pretty much working two full-time jobs while I find my way back to financial stability after an unexpected crisis at the end of 2015, and my daily output as far as productive work is enough to burn anyone out. And yeah, those are definitely, definitely factors. But they're not what's draining my emotional energy. And they're not what's infecting the wetware in my brain until I live in a space that isn't healthy for me, and all my subprocessing power is taken up by things that aren't constructive for pursuing my stories, and my career.

Frankly, lately I've been consumed by the discussions that have explored the experiences of numerous marginalized people, often people like me with shared lived experiences, primarily but not always in the book community. A lot of it has been productive and interesting; it's given me a lot to turn over and examine about myself, my interactions with society, and society itself–as well as about problematic representation in books. It's also given me people to identify with and connect to, when so often I've felt deeply isolated as a queer, multiracial, neuroatypical, sometimes gender-ambiguous man and survivor of CSA, rape, and relationship abuse. It's given me the framework I need to learn how to do better, be better in providing support and boosting voices across marginalizations both my own and not; it's also led to me stumbling into some places and people who mean well but are deeply and inherently harmful, but that's a talk and a struggle for another day.

And a lot of what's been going on hasn't been productive, even if it's working its way there through some harsh growing pains. Especially lately, when suddenly everything is escalating to the point where it would likely be appropriate to slap Willy Wonka's face up here with his nice little hat and shiny cheeks (I won't). Every day the overlapping messes get bigger, and expand to swallow more people. Every day people take sides, and other people fear what will happen if they disagree, and tiptoe over eggshells made up of the cracked bits of their current and future reputations in the publishing industry. Every day the lines get more and more muddled, until no one knows what anyone's talking about in specific anymore, only that everyone's hurting and everyone's waiting for their hurt to be addressed and heard the loudest before they address or hear someone else's pain; no one wants to be wrong. It's not something I really blame anyone for.

But I blame myself for getting pulled too deep into it. For going from observing to participating, because so much of it reflects my lived experiences and I wanted to share with people and seek + offer solidarity and understanding and perspective; I want to learn from people and, in learning, acquire the tools and language I need to find a healthier place in my relationship with my marginalizations and how I interact with others and how they interact with me. In moderation, that's great. When it becomes the new world I live in, until even when I'm away from it it consumes my thoughts…it's not. Especially with how painful it is right now.  Shots are flying in all directions in a constant realtime deluge, people of one marginalization are hurting people from others, and when you exist across many it's hard not to get caught by stray bullets from friends, foes, and strangers alike when everything they say hits hard at the core of your being. Everyone's angry about something. They have every right to be. I'm angry with some people too, though it's not anything I've aired publicly and the people I'm angry with either don't know or don't really care. I've chosen not to invest my energy in them, because nothing I say or do will get through to them and make them realize they can't excuse their behavior and their prejudices on the basis of considering themselves a generally good person or being told they're a good person by people who share their privilege and have never known the experiences of the people they've hurt and alienated.

The thing is, if I'm not investing my emotional energy and time in people who have hurt me directly…why is indirect involvement in the massive tangle of ongoing conflicts taking up so much of my mental capacity, capability, and reserves?

I can barely finish work when my clients expect it. My attention span is scattered and I struggle to stay on task. My short-term memory is shot. I can't make the cognitive connections I used to be able to. My sleep is restless and troubled. My migraines are starting to become more frequent. I'm forgetting words. I am always lowkey on the edge of anxiety, with that hard full feeling in my head that says I am living in a constant defensive state, the kind of alert animal panic mode I learned in my young life and home environment, warning me to be on guard and ready to flee when the other shoe drops. My stories are just disconnected words on a page that don't even feel like they belong to me; I barely scraped my edits for one publisher in on time, and I haven't touched edits on two other publisher books in over a week because I don't have the spoons for them even though they're almost done. I don't feel comfortable in my own space, though I tried various things to help–from weekend breaks to bringing a lot of my RL friends over onto this social media space to make it feel more like mine. It didn't work. Every subprocessor in my brain is still always trying to parse all these conflicting opinions and ideologies in context with my own lived and learned experience to form my own reasoning, thoughts, opinions, ideas, perspectives, meaning; every synaptic connection is taken up with the need to find a solution to a problem that's bigger than me, bigger than my entire lifetime.

And I know the reason I can't look away. It's not Train Wreck Syndrome. (It's a little Train Wreck Syndrome. It's oddly addictive, and every time you think it can't get worse, it does; just like the current U.S. election cycle, it feels like watching your familiar world come down in a rain of fire–and you don't know if you should watch to be aware, or cover your eyes from the carnage, or try to help pull people out of the flames. Not to mention the validation inherent in the call-and-response nature of the medium can be addictive, too. Right. Back on track as to the real reason.) It's because these things matter, and I want to fix them so badly that I can't stop hoping something will come up that will change it even though I know it's impossible for that to happen overnight and it won't stop these things from hurting me and the people around me.

I've talked about my need to fix things before. About my need for things and people to make sense, and how I get caught in stressy logic loops trying to make emotional fleshthings make sense when they just don't. Fleshthings aren't rational. A society of fleshthings isn't rational. There is no monolithic human machine that follows predictable, easily comprehensible patterns. And in trying to understand–particularly in trying to understand the hurtful explosions going on lately and how quickly they've multiplied into accusations beyond anything that publicly visible material can support–and make sense out of the conflicting actions of all the fleshthings around me, I've let myself get swallowed up and chewed to bits. Because I'm once again trying to make sense of something that can't be rationalized into simple logic, and this time it's a problem far larger than trying to connect with any one person across the awkward space of the infinity of each self-contained human universe. More than anything, I let myself be consumed by the helplessness and futility and anger I've felt in struggling with this.

And I can't do it anymore.

I can't keep losing myself in these conversations, in these messes, in this constant escalation. That doesn't mean that I don't think what's going on right now and what's been going on in various forms of discussion isn't useful, even if it's painful. These things are important. They need to be analyzed, discussed, shared, solved.

Just right now, none of those analyses, discussions, shares, or solutions need to come from me.

I'm not a particularly widespread or particularly valuable voice in the POC, queer, and neuroatypical communities. I'm aware of that. There are plenty of other people speaking, discussing, analyzing far better than I can. My silence will be no great loss. The only loss will be inside me; in feeling like I surrendered on a battle I can't win and stopped contributing to the uplifting of marginalized voices. In feeling like I let the helplessness and futility and anger take over. In feeling like I let myself be silenced–because make no mistake, a lot of what goes on in these conflicts is about silencing people who are just begging for acknowledgement and validation of their pain.

But in all these things I'm constantly trying to fix…I rarely stop and take the time to recognize what's going sideways in me, and fix that. I rarely take my own advice about self-care. I try, and then something happens and I start stressing again, and get diverted again.

I need to try again.

If I'm going to fix something, I need to fix me.

Because I miss the worlds I used to live in. I miss the way my brain used to work, in a mess of creative, fluid, powerful tangles that boiled and twisted into something chaotic and strange and emotional and horrifying and beautiful and macabre and heartbreakingly sweet–leaping from one idea to the next, forging connections, spinning new people into life during those wonderful periods when depression gives me room to live, breathe, be. I can't forget that those people, who speak in brown and feminist and queer and trans and neuroatypical voices, are just as important to this discourse as sharing dissections and analyses and real-life experiences. Because I can contribute through books that reflect the stories of people who need to see themselves in those books, and show their lives in ways that matter. That help. That boost. That say "This is your pain; this is my pain, too, and I acknowledge it and want to see better for us; to see a fictional world that lets us be real and human and fully realized, and lets our stories shape the changing perceptions of society."

But I need to get back to writing those books, to caring about them, to immersing myself in them, for them to be able to make a difference.

So…I'm shutting off my social media. For more than the weekend or a week or however long I tend to disappear for my shorter mental health days. I doubt I'll actually deactivate, but there will be no going silent but still lurking; there will be no occasionally responding to DMs or PMs. I am closing it all. Logging it out. Uninstalling from all devices. Turning off email notifications. It's a complete blackout. I may even install internet nanny apps on myself. My handles may be there, but I am not; the house is standing, but the rooms are empty of all but the shelves lined with records of moments past.

When I'll be back? I don't know. Probably when I finish all my edits, when I get myself properly immersed in a new story to find my mojo and slip back into my world again in a way that feels right, and when I finish my new website–which will also come with talking about my second pen name for SFF and announcing the good news that I've put off for over a frigging month now, which is just daft but is part and parcel of work and everything else overwhelming me. But if I haven't had the spoons for writing, I haven't had the spoons for programming in PHP and CSS, either. And I can't remember the last time I felt capable of picking up my graphics tablet and opening Painter and trying to make something beautiful. I'd like to have room and energy for that again. And I think when I come back I may do what I was talking about on Twitter earlier with going back to (carefully) reviewing books on GoodReads, but that's something to consider when I'm ready to be social again.

So I guess the catalyst for when I'll be back is when I'm ready to unveil the new website. That may take two weeks. It may take a month. It will take as long as it takes, because I know I won't be ready to even finish it until I'm in a place where I can function as myself again, instead of as this tangle of aching, tired self-analysis that can't seem to shut off.

Yeah. Shutting off has always been a problem of mine. It's why I'm an insomniac. It's why I dig deep into things and can't leave it at just surface. It's why I'm rarely able to forget when someone does something hurtful, even when I try to forgive. It's why I can't forget my own fuckups, either, and constantly turn over how I could have handled a situation better. It's why I can't stop trying to solve even unsolvable problems. My anxiety doesn't help that. In fact, my anxiety feeds on that, keeping my thoughts always running at full speed and in a thousand tangential directions of what-if, how, why. That microprocessor in my brain is always overclocked, and always parsing an infinite stream of data.

I just need to change what I feed into it right now. So if I can't shut myself off, I can at least shut off something that, as much as it has allowed me to meet wonderful friends and network with amazing educators and gain a platform for my authorial career, is currently a detriment to my mental, emotional, and even physical health. It's not the first time I've had to self-extract like this, even if sometimes it's involved extracting myself from individual people who are feeding me that constant detrimental data stream and needing too much of my time, energy, and emotional investment on parsing and processing unhealthy things–not just extracting myself from situations or environments. Sometimes it's just something you have to do, when you recognize that you've fallen into a mode that's eroding away at your reserves. And if I can be honest, I think I've been quietly turning over the idea of shutting down social media 100% since I read this post, which resonated so much it ached.

I love y'all. I do. I just need to be away for a while, and out of cyberspace and back into meatspace and a stable headspace. It's entirely possible I'll realize I shouldn't be here at all and should just deactivate and stick to my blog and GR reviews, but we'll see when that day comes. Right now the idea of deactivating is kind of appealing. I grew up in a chaotic environment in which potential and unpredictable violence was always a threat, and I had to live on my guard; I'm not sure I can be in a space and a community that puts me back in that same state when I fought so hard to get away from it. Because honestly, right now? It feels like half the book community, including people I trusted to be better than that, are saying "your existence isn't valid, your lived experiences don't matter, don't you dare infringe on my enjoyment of a thing by saying it hurts and devalues you; if you point out that I've hurt you, you're just being mean" on more than one front–and I've had enough of that for a goddamn lifetime.

My early life was one surrounded by people who should have supported me and instead pushed me in a corner and made me small; my own mother used to brag about how she almost aborted me and still wished I didn't exist. These discussions that are distracting me so much, taking up so much of my mental space struggling to find a solution? They're about whether or not I am allowed to exist in fiction. And even more, whether or not I'm allowed to exist in a way that accurately and deeply reflects the realism of my life experiences, instead of a fantasy that's been co-opted by privilege to suit their tastes. That is why I get so stuck on needing to find a solution. Because this is not just a problem of ideology and sociology, but a struggle for the right to exist, and I want an answer to that struggle. Because while people in the book community are telling people that stories about POC, about LGBTQIA, about NNT, about disability are about them but not for them…the people whose lives these things actually reflect are struggling to be heard, to tell our own stories in our own voices.

And we're being told that by these people, these people who colonized our realities and co-opted them into fantasy, that they wish we didn't exist. That we don't belong in our own stories. Which makes me not want to write my own stories for fear that they'll be shuffled aside, and that's a roadblock I'm not here for.

I'm not here to be colonized and then told to get out of what was mine in the first place. I'm not here for settlers taking my space and making it theirs, then pointedly reminding me how unwelcome I am because my brown queer neuroatypical femme maleness doesn't fit the decor they painted over the ruins they plowed. I'm not here to watch debates about whether or not I have the right to exist in literature taking place in a space that I had once considered supportive and educational, especially not when those debates hurt people I care about, people I connect to.

So maybe me tapping out means leaving that space to the settlers. But it also means protecting my own space, and that's what I need to do more than anything. My wetware has been compromised, my thoughts have been colonized, and I'm making a choice to make my space my own again. So I'm out. I am self-extracting.

So I can continue writing the books that allow me and others to exist in a space that gives us life–instead of taking that life away, claiming ownership, packaging it up, and mass-producing it as a commodity.

There's always email, if you need me. cole@colemccade.com. Light it up.

But as for me? I'm going dark.

And if you see me on Twitter or Facebook before at least May or so, fucking kick me.

Context matters.

So I have some thoughts about a recent mess in Booklandia, and I need to get them out somewhere other than Twitter, as I need to be able to explore this in a more cogent fashion than 140-character soundbytes. Because I'm feeling some kind of way about things right now, and it's really starting to eat at me.

In case you missed it: a beloved YA novel was optioned for film. A beloved spokesperson for proper representation of Native American and indigenous peoples wrote up a valid critique of the problematic appropriation and inaccurate depiction of Native tribes and stories in that book, which was written by a white author. A person who is at once loved and hated in the general mass community surrounding books, fandom, and POC and queer rep tagged the author in RTs of the critique. Friends of the author and fans of the book began subtweeting rampantly, as they felt this was a hostile act of bullying and shaming that they understandably wanted to protect their friend from, though I didn't see the tweets so I don't know if this is based on that person's reputation or on something else inherent in the tweets and how they were done. All I know is this:

By the time it spread beyond that small circle of people, those tagged tweets were gone. Deleted.

And since everyone was subtweeting and continued subtweeting without speaking directly of the issue or the person they were talking about, what I and many other people on Twitter–including many other marginalized authors–saw was a group of beloved, respected white YA authors who have often spoken out staunchly in allyship…suddenly making really horrible comments that put down any person from a marginalized group who spoke out, or who resisted tone policing, respectability politics, or the many other tools of discourse used to keep marginalized people in line and control the discussion.

There was something about internalized misogyny. There were references to Genghis Khan (and my part-Chinese butt was not amused). There was the general and oft-repeated statement that "if you're always angry, if you're frustrated, I'm going to stop listening even if your pain is valid, because I don't like anger." (Though that's a fraught issue. There's the matter of personal mental health, spoons, etc. So that's something you take on a case-by-case basis; I understand when someone is triggered or exhausted by anger and needs to practice self-care, but not when someone just shuts down because they don't want to confront their own privilege.) There was talk of human decency as if, by default, how POC express their pain is inhuman and indecent. There were explicit demands that marginalized people follow discourse on a path approved by people in positions of privilege, basically telling marginalized people what to do and how to speak if they want to gain recognition. There was snark about respectability politics, and more snark about "But where were you for [X marginalization]?" There was coded language like "toxic" and "rage-a-holics," which can be really, really harmful to marginalized people who are accustomed to having even their calmest words seen as aggressive, hostile, abusive, threatening when they're just trying to live. Overall there was a lot of stuff that, without context, was just mind-boggling and hurtful and strange when shaped around a discussion of someone pointing out that a book is problematic.

So I'm not here to critique the book. Deb Reese did that quite well, and her critique was valid and reasoned, and yes, I think readers should point out when a book, author, and publishing house fuck up on the representation front. I'm also not here to judge the person who tagged the author in the tweets. And I'm not here to judge the author, though I find it interesting that people defend her as a good person who made a mistake, but didn't stop to think maybe the tagger made a mistake and deserves the same forgiveness after she recognized what she did and deleted. One harmed entire nations and tribes of people with a widely consumed inaccurate depiction in popular media. One harmed one person with an ill-thought act on social media. But as Dylan St. James says so eloquently, one gets the benefit of the doubt for being "a good person" while the other doesn't.

What I'm here to talk about is that to anyone watching–and there are thousands watching, readers and fellow authors–what was said was seen as an overall critique of POC (and marginalized people in general) for speaking out about their pain. Especially when the coded language started; especially when the critique of how discourse is initiated and expressed started, from people who have no idea of the pain that POC live with every day or how it builds up to the breaking point until you're on the verge of screaming all day, every day, and it's everything you can do not to start crying in public somewhere. Without context, without those deleted tweets, we saw nothing but subtweets of popular authors being really, really nasty toward marginalized communities, to the point of accusing marginalized people of playing respectability politics and mocking them for critiquing a book that hurt them.

I'm not gonna lie. I came close to hyperventilating.

Because without context, every last one of those tweets could be about me, and about many other marginalized people I love. I speak sometimes gently, sometimes with humour, sometimes with passion, and suddenly I wondered if I was a "rage-a-holic" because even if I'm not angry all the time, sometimes I am when the frustration hits the breaking point. I wondered if the many times I've spoken about problems with being POC and queer have somehow left a black mark behind, because I didn't speak in the approved way. I wondered if I should stop speaking at all, because apparently silence is better than ever pointing out "Hey, this is problematic and it hurts me and other people." God knows I've been burned on that point before, and dealt with the retaliation.

I had a goddamned anxiety attack, basically. Triggered as hell, open-mouthed, hollow-eyed, emotionally wrung out and shellshocked…because all of the things being said, all of the derailing and snark and coded language, came from the same toolbox as the kind of internalized racism that people express constantly and aren't even aware of. If you use a hammer as a nutcracker, you may be using it in a different way, but that doesn't change that its original purpose was to bludgeon things into place. (God, that was a terrible extension of the toolbox analogy.) I still have a sick ache in the center of my chest, thinking about possible backlash of posting this. But in trying to figure out why people were attacking Deb Reese for bullying someone (they weren't) I ended up exposed to a lot of popular white YA authors saying things that made me feel small, that made me feel targeted, that made me feel like I should keep quiet and shut my mouth as a queer man of color; several others I spoke to felt the same, as they watched from the sidelines and with every comment, shrank smaller and smaller and felt more and more afraid. It also made me terrified of the fact that I'll likely be branching into YA soon, and the kind of environment that I can expect to find. And it confused me and left me hurt and betrayed, because some of these people are friends, or friends of friends, that I usually trust to be woke.

But somehow in talking about one person, many of them slipped into language that encompassed and affected a lot of marginalized people who are too accustomed to being silenced, tone policed, belittled, pushed aside, and judged harshly just for existing.

Because they were all having a conversation with each other, and forgetting that conversation is shared with the world, and many people are watching.

Look, we all love a good subtweet. God knows I do it sometimes, often when there's someone I want to call out on their racist, homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic, ableist, etc. mess but I don't feel like getting in a direct confrontation. And god knows I'm not going to tell anyone what they can and can't tweet. But when you have privilege and a large audience, when for you respectability politics is punching down hard to maintain control of the discourse while for marginalized people respectability politics is trying to demand some human decency in the face of centuries of derision…sometimes you have to remember that without the context of your subtweet, you may be saying things with the power to hurt a lot of people. People who aren't in on the joke. People whose only knowledge of you is what you're putting out publicly. And here's the thing. What was so shocking is that Deb Reese is a Native / indigenous woman, and so without that critical bit of information it read like attacking her for speaking as a non-white woman about issues impacting her and various Native / indigenous communities. It wasn't. But then you have to dial back and think that the person they were talking about is also a woman of color. And whether she was wrong or right for what she did, centering criticism of what she did as a person on racial matters and issues of racial politics that way reflected some ugly things that might still be ugly with or without context.

And just because you know what you meant and maybe one or two other people might be in the know doesn't mean you shouldn't stop and think about what you're flinging out into the world, especially when it's centered around nuanced issues affecting marginalized communities.

You don't know who you might hurt.

But I'd like to hope you care.

An Open Apology.

[trigger warning: g**** Romani slur]

So I've said it before, and I'll say it again:

Everyone is problematic.

You. Me. That dude next door. Frigging Ta-Nehisi Coates. You can be woke as fuck and still be problematic; you can be marginalized as fuck and still be problematic. Whether it's privilege blindness or just being socialized into internalized and externalized biases, we've all got shite to shake and we're all a work in progress, and we should always strive to improve. Which is why generally, even though sometimes I want to snarl "don't be shite, how's that for a life philosophy?" instead I try to remind myself and others:

Do better. Be better.

Problem is, back in 2014-2015, I failed at that.

And while I've endeavored to correct my ignorance, it feels wrong not to be honest about it, acknowledge it, apologize, and break this down so that maybe someone else reading this might learn from my mistake.

In my first book, A Second Chance at Paris, the word "gypsy" is used 4-5 times to describe my Romani hero, Ion Blackwell. At the time I knew it was a slur, but didn't know how bad it was; I saw it as a slur "only in some contexts" instead of a word that's been co-opted and embedded in language by non-Roma populations, entrenched deeply in the romance community as a romanticized stereotype, and used in blindly hurtful ways all the fucking time. At the time I didn't know it's every inch as bad as racial slurs that hurt me, like chink or the n-word (which I can say but won't, because that is a Google search demographic I do not want funneled my way). I even found ways to justify it. That it's always Roma from the hero's POV, but only gypsy from the heroine's POV because as a white woman she wouldn't realistically know any better; especially not in her early-teens flashbacks when she confesses her crush to her dad. That it's always used in positive context when she's talking about how she feels about him and describing him in her head. That before I decided to pull this book from my publisher because it doesn't fit into  their category lines, I'd asked my editor about my concerns over using the word and she passed over it, so it must not be a big deal. There may even have been a subconscious sense that because I'm not white myself, I'm safe from inflicting abuses on other marginalized communities because I'm not privileged the same way white people are.

Yeah. No. No. A thousand times no, and I've learned since then that those kinds of justifications are just bullshite. Pure and utter bullshite. It's cocks all the way down.

I'm not white, but I'm not Romani. And if I know better than to use the term myself, then my white heroine damned well should, too. Just the act of saying "she's using it in a positive context" ignores the history and connotations of the word in a damaging, willfully ignorant way. The fact that my editor overlooked my question was not implicit permission or a dismissal of the idea that the word may carry any weight, and I should have listened to my original unease. Yes, some Roma people have reclaimed the word, but that's for them, not for me, not for my characters. I shouldn't have had to contextualize it against my own experiences with ethnic slurs to extend a modicum of understanding toward the pain of others outside my demographics. And the fact that I rationalized it at all is a pointed reminder that yes, marginalized communities can hurt each other, too; it's not just the privileged shitting on us. We shite on each other across our various axes of marginalization, and it's fucked, and I'm disgusted with myself for contributing to that.

The thing is, no one called me on this. It's possible some people noticed when reading the book but chose not to say anything, likely wanting to avoid potential conflict; I've done the same in the past with issues that hit my pain points, because I just didn't have the spoons left to educate or confront when I didn't know how the person would receive it. But over the past few months I've seen discussion come up about this issue, flying by my Twitter timeline. And every time I winced, and thought "Should I change it?" but ran up against the problem of that flashback scene and whether or not a young Celeste would know better even though an older Celeste should. I thought about editing it to remove any reference to it from her POV entirely. I thought about writing in a new scene where Ion gently points out that even if she meant no harm, that's still a hurtful word to him and intent doesn't excuse impact; neither does ignorance. I thought about a lot of things.

And then I said "fuck it" and just went in and replaced "gypsy" with "Roma" or "Romani" in every context, because it's my damned book and my damned world and I set the rules–so if Celeste is a brilliant enough girl to grow up to be an astrophysicist who teaches at the Sorbonne, then she can be fucking brilliant and sensitive enough to understand the cultural and ethnic history of the guy she's in love with, and not use shitty slurs to describe him.

And if it's not realistic? Fuck realism. "Oh, that's just reality" is used to justify hurtful things in media all too often. Frankly I'd rather write respectfully than write realistically. The stories we tell have the power to change our reality, so I'm changing my book's reality to one where we can damn well do better.

So I fixed it and sent it off to the formatter a couple of weeks ago, and just got it back the other day; I've uploaded new editions of A Second Chance at Paris to all retailers with the correction, and it should be going live everywhere in the next few days. It's already up on Amazon and Smashwords, but other retailers take longer to roll out from the distributor. I thought about just quietly slipping the correction in there without saying anything, but I wanted to speak to and acknowledge anyone who may have read it already and been hurt by it; plus accountability is a thing. It's one word, but words have power. They can uplift, or they can hurt.

To the Roma community, I'm sorry for my mistake. I'm sorry I fucked up. It was hurtful and insulting, and I apologize deeply for the ignorance and insensitivity that led me there.

I hold people to a high standard. I hold myself to one, too. And I always ask people to do better.

Clearly I need to do more work to do the same.

I Made a Thing, and It’s for You: THE FALLEN Is Live Early, and It’s Free

So I’d meant to release THE FALLEN on December 31st, but Amazon was kind enough to set it free today. If you loved Crow City, then I hope you’ll enjoy coming back to it for a little while – and getting to meet Gabriel in his own voice, in this prequel story that takes place before he meets Leigh and gives us a window into the depth of his relationships with Gary and Maxi. We’ll learn just what broke him…and how he saved himself.

And we’ll get our first glimpse of the enigmatic man who calls himself Priest.

Vin Manion. A character I’ve been holding on to for years, a darkly irredeemable monster who was once Gabriel’s best friend – and whom I can’t wait to sink my teeth into in THE FOUND.

Read an Excerpt

Amazon UK and other international Amazon sites might be a little slow in updating the price for free, but if it’s not marked down for your location then you can get it free on Smashwords for any device. I’ll update this post and the book page as the links for B&N and Kobo go live.

I loved writing this book. It’s short, but I could feel every moment weaving together, building up to that moment when Leigh comes slipping quietly into Gabriel’s life, little ghost that she was. The near-misses. The intersections of their storylines.  The deeper explorations of Gary and Maxi’s pasts and personalities. Those moments that made it more and more clear that it was coming. I’ve never done that before – writing a prequel tie-in. It was immensely, oddly satisfying, this breathless anticipation that built toward the end…and I can’t wait to do it again with Priest’s story after finishing THE FOUND.

Just like with any Crow City story, THE FALLEN is triggery as hell – this time dealing heavily with issues of suicide, PTSD in military veterans, and substance abuse. The blurb below covers it a bit more, but as always, take the trigger warning in the front of the novel to heart and remember that it’s okay to put yourself first.

BLURB

Reconnect with Gabriel, Gary, Maxi, and Crow City in this free companion novella telling the story of THE LOST‘s Gabriel Hart before Leigh entered his life – and get a sneak preview of the sinister Priest, hero of THE FOUND (coming 2016).

Gabriel Hart is a broken man.

And everyone close to him dies.

His military unit. His sister. His parents. Everyone he’s come to care for has been taken from him, leaving him with nothing but a crippling war injury, a Vicodin addiction, and a scraggly, chewed-up rag of a cat. It’s enough to make anyone want to check out. And when he holds his service pistol in his hand and presses it against his temple, for the first time in a long time the world feels right.

But he’s not as alone as he thinks. And when grizzled bar owner Gary challenges him to honor his sister’s memory by repairing her houseboat before he gives up on life, he discovers she left more for him than her belongings. And her letters lead him on a trail through discovering himself, discovering what he truly wants…and discovering that he has the strength to choose his own path.

Praise for THE LOST from Publishers Weekly: “If the romantic character study is a genre, this fascinating contemporary novel is its exemplar. McCade digs deep into the difficult topics of rape, incest, and sexual abuse via the remarkable voice of Clarissa Leigh VanZandt.”

NOTE & TRIGGER WARNING: This novella does not have a romantic or erotic storyline, but is the companion novella to a romantic erotica as a prequel tale told from the hero’s POV. While it is a standalone book, it’s a character story designed to segue into the beginning of THE LOST and should not be considered a separate romance. This story also contains content discussing suicide and self-harm at length. If you are triggered by such things, please don’t hesitate to put the book down and focus on self-care.

I think that just about covers everything. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Now…off I go to get started on THE FOUND.