one year of these deathless shores

hello friends! i have once again forgotten to post more than once every three months oops. anyway, the one-year anniversary of these deathless shores’ publication is coming up and i thought i’d do a retrospective™ of what i learned about book things this year.

some things traditional publication gave me:

1. bit o’ cash, aka savings for the first time in my life

2. a lovely community of fellow debuts (& also peeps i met through pitch wars cont’d., s/o the final class!!)

3. a gorgeous 464+-page object with which to bonk haters on the head and whose cover my mother uses as her phone background:

some things trad pub did not give me:

1. enough money or stability to own a home, have any real hope of retiring, etc. though what’s new i guess.

2. an escape hatch from being inside my own brain—i think a lot of people would mention impostor syndrome here; weirdly, i have impostor syndrome about everything except writing, and the same principle applies re: reaching milestones in those areas. but there’s other junk in ye olde skull and most of it doesn’t get magically slurped out either.

3. a feeling of having been 𓇢𓆸received𓇢𓆸 / read / understood—i think every new author has to learn for themself, empirically, that (i feel like andrea stewart said this somewhere?) goodreads is the pain box. do not go there. and also comparison is the thief of joy, because the goalpost for what feels like success is always, always moving, whether that’s with respect to who gets chosen (or even pitched) for certain book boxes or who’s announcing their third and fourth books the same year their debut comes out or who got on this or that “best of” list or or or. the list truly goes on forever (turning to story has a great episode on this), and the idea of having an audience™, for me at least, has remained mostly a black box. but also: you could change a stranger’s life and they might never tell you? your book might have 16 holds in a library in central texas and one of those borrowers, who’s waited weeks or months to read it, could actually have a good time? some advice from grace d. li—”whenever you're feeling jealous about someone else's professional success, ask yourself if you would trade the book you're writing for theirs.” & i can still open to any page of tds and be proud of what i’ve written. truly. there’s only about 3% retrospective cringe, which is like 30–96% less than average.*

4. a guarantee of future book deals—there is probably an essay in me about the publishing industry’s irrational glorification of the debut and its parallels to the romanticization of childhood (tl;dr: you haven’t fucked up yet). but also, fun fact from publishing rodeo (iirc one of the first few episodes): if you write under a different name—or even add/use initials, etc.—apparently your sales numbers start over. and i’ve always been meh about my given name anyway so. ¯_(ᵕ—ᴗ—)_/¯

finally, the primary takeaway: there are truly so many people involved in putting a book out into the world. so much work that agents put in, editing and negotiating and writing difficult emails and explaining to authors the weird quirks of the industry; editors, giving more notes and managing the 5284 moving pieces and advocating for the book with passionate enthusiasm in front of the entire publishing team (editorial, sales, publicity, etc.); copyeditors and production people and designers and artists working their witchcraft (orz i have very much been blessed by the cover gods); marketing / sales / publicity spreading the word; booksellers and librarians finding it among catalogs of thousands of new books as they curate collections for their communities; reviewers and social media folk analyzing and critiquing and talking it up.

however.

hour by hour, day by day. no one but you is spending six years on that thing. (i mean, hopefully literal-you is not spending six years on that thing, either, but i digress.) no one is living inside the characters’ bodies and minds to the degree that you are, or gnashing your teeth at a new song because so perfectly fits a certain scene, or rushing out of the shower to whip open your laptop because you’ve thought of a plot twist. to me, writing is process. it is an act of existence in time, and a choice of how to spend it.

and so (i can’t remember who i’m quoting, only that i am): why not love it? why not allow yourself to be yourself on the page, in a world that increasingly demands conformity and biting your tongue? why not play, in this space devoid (if you so choose) of performance reviews or exams—where you’re allowed to fall short, to be wrong, to spin new worlds out of thin air?

i’ve said that future book deals, at least for me, are not guaranteed. but i’m also continually navigating what that means when writing is one of the precious few places i feel free. in the end, having been published—having experienced the attendant pressure to build a brand™ while still holding the equivalent of ~2.5 jobs and becoming increasingly aware of the limits of my time in general, in this life—it’s become more important to me than ever that the stories i spend time on are the ones i genuinely want to tell.

on turning to story, there’s another** episode in which my agent (hi mike!!) talks about how many authors’ debuts are their ‘fuck-it books.’ the ones they write just for themselves, with all the weird hyperspecific shit that makes their brain go brr but somehow resonates with other people too. and it makes one think: what if every book was your fuck-it book? what if you wrote every story because—whatever else may come after—it was worth it, for who it allowed you to become?

some summer events!!

• i’ll be at the columbus book festival next weekend, paneling with some extremely cool people (nghi vo, jennifer k. lambert, ehigbor okosun, & lauren francis-sharma)!! (screench!!) full schedule here! https://www.columbusbookfestival.org/

• i’m moderating at concurrent seattle on august 14!! the panel is “worlds and the spaces between: exploring the liminal in science fiction” with yume kitasei, micaiah johnson, charlie jane anders, and felicia martínez. which is wild because a) i was reading some of these authors back when i was just learning about the contemporary sff scene & also how to write (orz orz orz), and b) i basically did my mfa in liminal spaces >: ) y’all can get in on the fun (and help us get funded! basically just the $ for venue rental and labor, and we are very close!) at concurrentseattle.weebly.com. would love to see you there!

• i’ll also be at worldcon! currently slated for the thursday 6–7pm panel “writing without heroes and villains,” plus a signing table friday 12–1 and a reading of these deathless shores saturday 7:30–8pm.

in other news:

• my poem “after they blasted your home planet to shrapnel” was nominated for  both an ignyte and a rhysling?????? my gob is smacked. truly. i’m so grateful to be nominated. aaaaaaaaa (also go read the other finalists’ poems—they are STUNNING and will give you full-body chills)

• these bodies ain’t broken, a ya horror anthology edited by madeline dyer that contains my novelette about literally hostile architecture & ivory tower privilege, has received a starred kirkus review! (first starred review of my life tbh :) ) it’s up for preorder now and comes out september 23.

reading / listening

• writing the above (and attempting to search for that citation) reminded me of yanyi’s “why do you write“

• speaking of poets: “dear white girls in my spanish class” by ariana brown. also prelude to bruise by saeed jones

• music: “hot gum,” “crowd caffeine,” “everybody supports women,” &c. by sofia isella (grandpa voice: i don’t know if this is tiktok music but it slaps). give me more music that isn’t about falling in love / having sex / breaking up / going to parties, i am begging. contradictorily: “i know it won’t work” / gracie abrams is holy terrors coded. “grammy” and “helluva year” by aj smith. “lightning and thunder” / marianas trench. “strange premonition” / kiki rockwell (ty to v. e. schwab for introducing me to this artist)—sinners vibes

• fiction: the city in the middle of the night by charlie jane anders (oh to have free top surgery and a functioning society. also bianca gives big-time caitlyn kiramman—if you’re an arcane fan i think you’d enjoy this one); the stardust grail by yume kitasei (space freaks me out but there was an. unexpected tenderness? to the character dynamics. also museum heists & diaspora feels!); the past is red by catherynne valente (they live on the ocean garbage patch the size of texas and it is horrible and wonderful and also valente prose)

thanks so much for reading! have an old pic of spot at a barbecue:

*a statistic i have obtained with real science.

**sorry there are only ~two podcasts i semi-consistently listen to, unless my friends yell at me about others, so drop your recs in the comments : )