Speculative Poetry Interview and A Guest Blog Post on PR for Poets – Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone and Getting Through the Hard Parts

Goldfinches and Sunflowers

Good morning from a slightly gray northwest June day. This pair of goldfinches I caught two nights ago at almost dusk. Then yesterday morning one landed on my deck and tried to eat from the hummingbird feeder! I think sunflowers attract goldfinches. Can anyone tell me if that’s true? Anyway, I bought a sunflower for my back deck and since then, I’ve seen goldfinches way more often.

Interview about The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, Science Fiction Feminism, and Speculative Poets I Love

Thanks to T.D. Walker for interviewing me on her blog for her “speculative poets in conversation” series. I talk about my love of Tennessee, the impacts of nuclear pollution, why I wrote The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, the dangers of scientific forefathers, and more!

Guest Blog Post on PR for Poets and The Importance of Getting Out of Our Comfort Zones

Also thank you to Anna of The Diary of an Eccentric Bookworm for hosting me as a guest blogger for this post on PR for Poets and an anecdote about the importance of getting out of our comfort zones. Read it if you want to hear about one of my first and most uncomfortable reading experiences!

Getting Through the Hard Parts

The last few days have been a little rough. My husband’s been sick with a summer cold, that I caught and laid me low for a couple of days. I got disappointing news from the blood tests for my liver, a few things were “out” – which could mean cancer, or could mean a reaction to medications, or nothing – and I have to get them redone in two weeks. If you follow this blog, you know I’ve lived with the uncertainty of cancer – diagnosed first as terminal and metastatic, now a big question mark – for the last two years. And then I was diagnosed with MS. Not a banner time for me, personally, emotionally, or professionally. You may have noticed I start most blog posts with positive things – birds, flowers, favorite places. This is intentional – a reminder to myself that there is still beauty in the world, despite the news, despite what I’ve been going through personally.

So when I read the news about Kate Spade’s death by suicide it felt personal. Here was one of my heroines – successful businesses woman who supported charities I cared about, creator of interesting and artistic accessories still appropriate for working women (probably the first purchase I made as a working woman to prove to myself I had “made” it was a Kate Spade bag.) It’s horrible thinking about her 13-year-old daughter going through the trauma. It’s a loss.

But here’s the thing – hidden illnesses are just that – hidden. I’ve never seen a picture of Kate Spade where she wasn’t perfectly put-together and smiling. She had plenty of money, plenty of success. But that had nothing to do with it.

I twittered about my sadness over her death, including a string of her accomplishments. A Trump supporter (literally that’s all I could tell about this person from their Twitter bio) wrote to me asking me about her charity involvement. I was wary – usually Trump supporters only write to me to say racist, sexist, hate-filled things – but it turned out through our twitter conversation that this twitter person was struggling to understand the suicide of a seemingly good, happy person, much like the rest of us.

It’s a reminder that many of us have struggled without showing obvious signs. It’s a reminder that we are all trying to get through the hard parts.

I write about the good things in my life but I have also tried to share some of the bad parts, too, because I don’t want to try to pretend. No one’s life is perfect. Every writer or creative person struggles first to create, then get their creations into the world, then the responses to their creations – then the cycle starts again. Chronic illness takes a toll. I carefully construct an image – you don’t often see pictures of me in the hospital, getting blood drawn or getting yet another MRI, or the days when I feel too bad to get out of bed. But that doesn’t mean bad days don’t happen – of course they do. Just a reminder that we should have compassion for each other, for ourselves, because no matter what a life looks like on the outside, each of us has days when it can all seem like too much.