Life during darker times; a call to action

Good morning, friends. I sit here on the couch, cozy under a rainbow crocheted blanket with my early morning [well, early for me] tea–Earl Grey, hot–and my daily reminder of spring allergies thanks to early morning congestion, and I think about the State of Things.

This blog isn’t usually where I talk about the State of Things. I save that for Ko-fi or my Bluesky account, or I vent with colleagues on one of the Discord servers I’m on that’s specifically for writers. I figure that having a space that’s dedicated to writing and my books and mostly held separate from the ongoing fascist collapse of the country that I live in and how it’s affecting me and those I care about is a nice space to have.

But see, that’s a bigger fantasy than the ones that I write.

Despite all these chunky sentences I’m typing out, filled with language that’s both designed to give you a glimpse of the real me and to humanize everything I’m going to say here today, I’m a turmoiled mess under the surface I offer the public. I’m not hiding that–see the paragraph above where I talk about venting–but that’s usually something I do within containers I deem safer and not quite so much directly tied to my work.

But my work is threatened. Hell, I’m threatened, the artist and author and human where from those creative things flow.

I’m not going to pretend that I’m the only one. We’re all in a state of danger right now, but my story is the one I know how to tell best, and to be honest? I don’t like using other people’s stories in heartfelt statements like the one I’m making with this blog post. It feels like I’m stealing their suffering, and that’s no good. But I share other people’s stories all the time on Bluesky, because that links to their pages and places where you can help them.

Today, it’s my turn.

I can paint a pretty picture of calmness and security, like I did at the beginning. The reality is that at this moment I’m okay. Okay-ish. I don’t have much revenue coming in at the moment, but I’m hardly starving or in danger of losing the roof over my head at this time. But I’m well aware of how precarious my position is.

I’m a disabled person with a chronic illness that makes life pretty shitty some of the time, pun absolutely intended, because mirth is what keeps me going. I depend on my family for support, because I can’t keep a “regular” job and writing, as glorious as it is, hardly pays the bills. Oh, and even if it did, there are assholes out there every day who see no problem with pirating the work of artists and authors to line their own coffers or fuel their plagiarism machines. I’m trying to get financial help, but that’s threatened by the current fascist government.

I depend on Medicaid in order to get the healthcare that I need, which includes regular gastroenterologist visits, CT scans, MRIs, colonoscopies [yep, multiple, I’m so lucky], and a very expensive medicine that doesn’t actually fix the problem, but does make it not try to actively kill me. I spend a ton of time every day dealing with my illness, and it would be worse without the program that helps me stay alive–another thing that’s threatened by the current fascist government.

I’m queer, disabled, and neurodivergent. These things are part and parcel of who I am, and I include all of them in my writing. I can’t imagine not doing that; it’s a reality of my world and of so many other people I know. It keeps my stories grounded, and it’s a fundamental part of what I do to include people that look and live like me and my friends, colleagues, and community. That also puts a target on my back in this fascist regime, and it’s only that I’m a small and relatively unknown author that keeps me safer…for now.

Just using the term “fascist regime” might be a problem soon enough, if things keep going the way they’re going. I’m going to keep using it, because it’s correct and I refuse to minimize what’s happening here. If that puts a target on my back, so be it. It can join all the others.

I’m not telling you all this to garner sympathy. These are just realities; I’ve been living with them for a while now, and I’m not shy about talking about them because, as I’ve said, they shape what I write as well as how I live.

But right now, the biggest reality is that all these things leave me in the most vulnerable place I’ve been in…in perhaps forever. And look, I’ve been homeless, I’ve been destitute. I laid in a hospital bed for days on end after finding out that I almost died, from something that could have been treated much earlier if I’d had decent doctors and insurance before the ACA came along and saved my ass.

I know an endless parade of other authors, especially indie authors, who are in the same, shitty boat.

I know that many of you who are reading this are probably in that boat with us, or in a similar one.

What can we do?

It’s now early afternoon [I took a break to think while I did all my beginning-of-the-day things] and the answers aren’t any closer. In my books, the characters would draw closer together, plan and plot with the strengths they possess and the knowns they have to work with. They would draw on community and yes, their magic–but every time they use their magic to solve a problem, it’s actually a metaphor for pulling from their inherent, often overlooked or discounted strengths, the whole thing they’ve been searching for throughout the story they’re in.

As Lucee would say, we’re strongest when we’re together. Or as Cullen would declare, “The magic is us.”

No one’s coming to save us. We have to band together and save ourselves.

It’s going to take a variety of paths. Mutual aid. Protesting. Community action and support. Looking out for each other, even when things seem insurmountable.

I wish I could wrap this up with more uplifting words, because despite my sunny disposition and the hopefulness of my last couple of paragraphs, I’m scared and struggling, and again, I know so many other authors and other creative people are even worse off than I am. People look to us for the beauty that helps the world be easier to navigate and to ease the stresses that come with daily life. They want us to inspire, give food for thought, distract, entertain, and enrich their lives.

We’re happy to do that. It’s our calling. But we can’t do it from a place of fear. We can’t do it in squalor, or while waiting to be disappeared or for our illnesses to kill us off. And we definitely can’t do it while we’re struggling to make ends meet because everyone wants our magic but not enough want to support the magic-makers.

It doesn’t have to be me. If you’re already here chances are good that you’ve read at least one of my books, though if you haven’t, there are links in the navigation bar at the top of this page. If you want to do more for me specifically, I write tons of content at my Ko-fi weekly, and supporters get to see it first. But if you could go to the pages of the LGBTQA+ writers, the Black authors, the disabled authors, the marginalized authors from multiple backgrounds and communities, and support them? That would be a fantastic start! Buy directly from them if possible. Join their Patreons and Ko-fis and newsletters and review their books and tell your friends to buy them too.

That’s a beginning.

Don’t know where to look? Ask me. I have lists, friends. I’m even on a few of them. You can try starting with the books that are finalists in the Indie Ink Awards. Or you can use their dropdown search to find books in different diversity representation categories. There are also numerous starter packs on Bluesky that are worth investigating. Your local library can also give you some help and would be thrilled to do so.

I hope that these heartfelt, honest words convince you to support indie authors, and perhaps have shown you some ways to assist us that you can do even if you’re broke, too. This is a calling and vocation that’s extremely important and is full of people who have traditionally struggled to thrive. Please be a part of our community and help us continue on as the world grows darker and more inhospitable to us.

postscript: It’s no coincidence that instead of coffee on my Ko-fi, I ask for tea. You spill the tea, you say something is your cup of tea. I promise that what I’ve talked about today is no tempest in a teapot.

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