Why Is Self-Care So Hard?

A few days ago, I looked in the mirror and flinched.  I was exhausted, with no makeup, my hair in a ragged mess, and wearing a sweatshirt which should have been retired from service at least ten years earlier.  Not my best look.

And the thing is, I have pretty tops that fit me.  I know how to wear my hair so that it looks awesome and stays up and out of my way during the day.  I've long known that failing to pencil in my eyebrows makes me look like Grima Wormtongue and that I look infinitely cuter with a little lipstick.  And I could have taken a nap earlier in the day, but instead found myself doom-scrolling through Twitter.

None of those things take a particularly long amount of time or a strenuous amount of effort.  I'm excruciatingly aware of that when I make the choice in the morning to walk away without doing them.  I know that it is going to hurt when I catch a glimpse of myself later in the day.  I know that I feel better when I take the time to pick out a cute pair of earrings.  Blame my internalized misogyny or patriarchal oppression if you wish, but it's the truth.  When I think I look nice, I feel better and more confident.

Which brings me to the question: why do I find it so hard to make that effort?

I suspect I'm not the only person who experiences this.  It's something I've often heard among my friends and there's a reason why self-care is at the top of most self-help lists.

One of the things I hear in my head is that there's no point in making an effort because it's not like I'm going to see anyone.  And yet, that's not true.  At a minimum, I'm going to see myself.  And taking care of myself isn't about living up to someone else's opinion of how I should look (I have hit the "you have obviously mistaken me for someone who gave a fuck about your opinion" stage of my life).

The easy answer is that it's a form of self-punishment, which is something I am sadly far too familiar with.  I've rarely been a good friend to myself.  If anyone spoke about one of my friends in the way I speak about myself in my head, I would kick their butt immediately.  I've often blamed myself for circumstances that were out of my control.  But that's too easy and, in a way, it's furthering the self-punishment: you're not doing it because you're not good enough to be worth it.

The slightly more compassionate answer is that 2020 has been a terrifying hellscape of a year and my energies have been going toward survival for myself and my family.  And that would be a very simple answer to accept.  After all, I'm not the only one embracing the sweatpants as workwear dynamic.  But it doesn't ring true for me.  I struggled with these issues long before COVID reared it's ugly microscopic head.

Maybe it's a society thing.  Our society praises self-denial a lot.  We admire those who deny themselves simple pleasures (creating the awful and overused trope of "pretty, skinny girl takes a bite of a donut and loses all control" that I despise).    And yet, what is the actual value of self-denial?  Where is the benefit in living a life where a person is, at a minimum, mildly unhappy most of the time?  Where a great deal of their effort goes into saying no to the things that bring them pleasure?

A lot of studies have shown that willpower is a finite resource.  The more a person denies themselves, the harder it is to deny themselves the next time.  Yet it is also difficult to take care of oneself, to say yes to oneself.

Maybe that's where it needs to start.  With just one yes.  Just one: I'll do this because it makes me feel happy.

Previous blogpost: Reclaiming My HEA: Practice Makes Perfect

Blog homepage

Creating Stories With Music

Music is a big part of my writing process.  I have thousands of songs sorted into dozens of playlists for characters, moods, and universes.  Maybe it's the result of too many formative years spent watching movies and television, where the right emotions are always triggered through the background music, but it's how my brain works.  Sound creates fictional worlds faster than anything else for me.  

It is impressive how consistently music can affect our interpretation of what we see.  Stores use catchy music to encourage people to be cheerful and impulsive (thus more likely to buy things).  Cathedrals were built to amplify certain chords within their structure, creating experiences of awe and transcendence.  A switch in music can change a story from a hopeful musical into a horror film.  

My writing process often starts with a scene inspired by a song.  I imagine an emotionally powerful experience or connection.  With Revelations, it was Michael telling Dani that she is not a monster, inspired by the song True Colors.  I wanted to create a profound moment of being seen, all the bad parts and all the good parts.  Of having someone truly know and understand, making it impossible to dismiss their feelings of love.  In Division, the first moment was Vincent falling into a depressed fugue and realizing he has to pull himself out, inspired by Bring Me To Life.  He is desperate to find a way out of the trap of his own mind.  He's reaching out to anyone who might be able to save him, but still finds the strength to offer a hand to someone else who is equally trapped.

Knowing this, it's probably not a surprise that my book, Deadly Potential, features a songwriter who uses music to sort out her emotions and experiences, transforming them into notes and lyrics.  Delving into the music industry was incredibly fun, providing a peek into a world that I've always been curious about.  I read a lot of biographies, including Never Say No To A Rock Star and biographies of Lady Gaga, Celine Dion, and Madonna.  I learned that there are song factories, where people write dozens of songs each day, which are then bought by performers and managers.  There are people who can write a song in ten minutes and others who spend months crafting each chord.

A song can tell a story just as powerfully as a book.  It gives us the same opportunity to experience life from another person's point of view.  It's probably why music and stories are so intertwined.  As Hugh Grant explained in the movie, Music and Lyrics, nothing can make you feel happy as quickly as the right song.  Except maybe, the right story.

Previous blogpost: Fixing Jurassic Park III: Learning a Lesson from Bad Stories

Blog homepage

The Problem with Problematic Creators

One thing that a lot of people have been doing during this pandemic is going back and re-watching and re-reading old favourites.  And many of us are discovering that those old favourites have not aged particularly well.

It is astounding to present-me to see how many of the shows I used to watch relied on punchlines about cross-dressing or sexuality.  Not to mention the slurs and attacks on women's sexuality.  There were shows that I used to look forward to every week that are now unwatchable.  And that makes me sad and it makes me wonder how many toxic messages they installed in my subconscious.

Because that's what problematic content does.  It reinforces toxic messages that are already present in our society.  Those messages encourage us to devalue and dismiss marginalized people and their experiences.  They also incite fear and discomfort around targeted identities.

Sometimes that content is due to the creators being unaware of their own biases and societal influences.  And sometimes, it is hard to believe that content is anything other than deliberate.

I am, of course, talking about the latest release by J.K. Rowling.  Rowling has been very vocal against trans women, questioning their right to exist and live their lives as they wish.  She has equated them with predators and claimed that recognizing trans rights somehow erase or eliminate women's rights.  Then, in her new book, she's made the villain a cis man who dresses as a woman in order to stalk and kill other women.

As was noted in Disclosure (a Netflix documentary that I strongly encourage people to watch), a cross-dressing serial killer/predator was one of the more common tropes for a very long time in books and films.  Even though, in real life, trans people are far more likely to be the victims of assault and attack rather than the perpetrators, there was a recurring message that they were somehow inherently dangerous.

I think there can be little doubt that Rowling has deliberately created this character and plot as a reinforcement of her own beliefs.  Those beliefs have already caused a great deal of questioning and hurt among fans of the Harry Potter series.  It can be difficult to reconcile one's own experience of a fictional world as a much needed escape.  I spoke in last week's post about how fans become deeply attached to their fandoms, investing pieces of themselves in these fictional worlds and making them real.  Having to repudiate those stories can feel like having to cut off a piece of themselves.

I went through this myself with another author.  As a child, Ender's Game held a special place.  It was the only book that spoke to a reality I was struggling with: that adults could deliberately lie to children and place them in painful situations.  In almost every other YA story that I was reading, the adults were absent, ignorant, or secretly supportive.  Often the misunderstandings and hard feelings between the main characters and their caregivers/guardians/parents could be resolved by both parties being honest about their feelings.

In Ender's Game, the adults are lying to the children in order to manipulate them into fighting a war.  They push the children beyond the point of endurance and eventually make them complicit in genocide.  The adults are doing this knowingly and in full understanding of the trauma they are inflicting.  In their minds, the ends justify the means.  Those with power chose to harm those without it and to pretend they were merely helping.

That meant a great deal to me when I read it.  And yet, I will not share this book with my children or recommend that anyone else read it because its author is actively encouraging harm against the LGBTQ+ community.  There are deliberately harmful messages about homosexuals in that book and many others written by him.

I've had many people argue with me about where I draw the line.  They point out other authors with problematic content, like Mark Twain or Tolkien.  They encouraged me to use "death of the author" textual analysis or to embrace the elements I found meaningful and discard the ones I found unacceptable.  They've argued that authors' works shouldn't be censored due to their personal opinions.

To which I reply: they have missed the point entirely.

Rowling and OSC are still alive (unlike Twain and Tolkien).  They are not merely repeating contemporary prejudices but are actively seeking to alter the current world.  "Death of the author" is an academic exercise for interpreting a text, not a build-your-own buffet of selective embrace.  And as both Rowling and OSC are making a comfortable living off their intellectual properties, any interpretation of criticism as censorship falls short of a reality check.

There are harmful messages all around us.  We're bombarded with them and the only way to change that is to maintain constant vigilance and awareness.  It's difficult enough to do when dealing with creators who are mindful and actively trying not to commit harm.  When a creator insists on repeatedly pushing a toxic trope or idea, then I as a consumer of media am required to make a choice as to whether or not I wish to implicitly endorse this toxicity and risk reinforcing it in my subconscious by consuming those creations.

It's not possible to entirely separate the art from the artist.  Because art is a reflection of its creator and the way they see the world.  And that view shapes how fans of that art see the world as well.

And I'd rather see a world where people are respected and included.

Previous blogpost: The Trouble with Fan-Fic (The Mandalorian)

Blog homepage

I'm Not Okay (And That's Okay)

As may be guessed from the extended silence on this blog since March, things haven't been going well.  I'm giving myself permission to admit that I'm not okay and I haven't been okay for awhile.

My life was difficult even before the COVID pandemic hit.  I often felt as if I were standing on a slowly submerging platform, holding heavy weights of responsibilities.  There were many times when the best I felt I could hope for was that I could keep my children afloat while I slowly drowned.  I was dealing with depression, engaged in a war of attrition with my local school board to give my 16yo the supports he needed (a battle that had already lasted 5 years as of September 2019), watching my 20 year marriage dissolve and facing financial and personal insecurity, and also deal with the usual challenges of raising teenagers, paying bills, and, oh yeah, writing books.

With COVID, I suddenly found myself unemployed and trying to manage four people sharing a house (including my ex-husband, which is a whole other area of stress and challenge).  I became a teacher, a peacekeeper (in the military sense, guarding borders to keep my two kids from launching attacks on one another), a therapist, and an activities coordinator.  Almost everything that we relied on for engagement for my older son was suddenly off-limits (no bus rides, no trips to ride cool elevators, and no swimming in public pools).  My youngest was worried about the world in general and needed reassurance that this was not the beginning of the End Times while also getting recognition that his feelings were important and shouldn't be denied (my parental attempt to assure I don't pass on the requirement for a Pollyanna mask that I was required to wear as a child).

Like many people, I also found myself responsible for managing my parents.  I recently saw a meme which introduced a child as the "emotional support daughter" and that was the role I found myself in, listening to frustrations from both of them.  (I have at least learned not to attempt to provide solutions or suggestions for the most part, which often created greater conflict in the past.)  They were intensely social before the pandemic and while they recognized the seriousness of what happened, they were lonely and needed social support.

As "March Break" stretched from one week to three to the rest of the school year, I found myself becoming physically and emotionally exhausted.  My creativity crashed and I was so tired that I was often sleeping more than 14 hours a day.  I couldn't watch television or movies.  I couldn't read books.  Everything seemed impossibly difficult.

I reached out for help and began working with my doctor and a therapist to adjust my medications and thinking.  I began rewatching and rereading old favourites and discovered that much of my anxiety around consuming stories was centered around **new** stories where I didn't know what was going to happen.  With stuff I'd already seen and read, I could get the necessary mental escape but didn't have the underlying anxiety of wondering if I was going to hit something that would plunge me into a bad mental space.

I tried different creative outlets, painting and sewing.  I changed my daily meditation from sitting quietly to listening to music and letting my thoughts wander.  I wrote fan fiction, bringing me back to the fandoms and universes that I've always loved and found inspiring.

Those things all helped.  But I'm still in a fragile place and one of the biggest things I need to be careful of is my twin lifelong tendencies to refuse to admit that anything is wrong and to push ahead beyond my limits.  (Yay, history of Perfectionism!)  This post is my way of not falling into that trap.

There are a lot of things that are still wrong.  There are many days when I feel completely invisible, like a machine that runs the household rather than a person.  I desperately miss having a sense of romantic and emotional attachment with another person, of being important to someone else.  (Not to dash the hopes of any second-chance-romance fans out there, but that connection died a long time ago with me and my ex-husband.)  I am faced with the reality that I will be caring for my oldest child for the rest of my life, and given how the autism support structure has been gutted in Ontario, there is little to no chance of ever being able to live solely for myself at any time in the future.  I'm worried about money and being able support myself and my children.  I'm terrified about the state of the world and the ugliness that seems to be swallowing our hopes faster than we can ignite them.

In being open about the challenges I'm facing, I'm hoping that my readers will understand and be patient with the fact that for the foreseeable future, I will be quieter and less productive than I have been in the past.  It isn't because I don't want to share the stories which still linger in my head, because I do.  I still love my characters and their adventures.  I want them all to have their happily ever afters.

I know many of you are facing similar (and sometimes worse) challenges and are looking for your own mental escape into a world where we know that no matter how bad things seem at the moment, our dreams will always win.  I don't have the same faith that we live in that world anymore, but I do still believe in creating a world where that happens.  If it needs to be fiction for now, so be it.  Maybe we'll find our way into making it real eventually.

Meanwhile, it's okay to not be okay.  It's okay to admit it.  It's okay to ask for help.  We don't need to be strong and risk breaking.  Individual strands can carry more when they're braided together.  We can all be not okay together, giving ourselves room to be angry, upset, and all the other feelings that we should feel when things aren't okay.

I'm not okay.  And if you're not okay, either, then that's okay.  Okay?

The "I'm Clean/Condom" Scene

Okay, be forewarned.  This is going to be a frank discussion about my opinions on condom-use during sex and how it's depicted in romance novels.

Anyone who reads romance has seen variations of the scene I'm about to describe.  It usually doesn't happen with the first sex scene, but there are good odds of it happening later on.  The couple is ready to make love when they realize they don't have a condom (because they're on the run, or they've gone through the original pack).  There's a brief discussion that includes some or all of the following:

- I haven't been with anyone for <X length of time>
- I've been tested recently and I'm clean
- I'm on the pill/shots/am infertile so we don't have to worry about pregnancy

I'm not casting stones at any other authors.  I've adored and recommended books where this exchange happens.  But it has begun to bother me, especially when the main characters haven't known one another very long.  Pushing someone to have unprotected sex is not an expression of love and caring.  Blindly accepting someone's word on their sexual habits is not a sign of a secure relationship.  And I'm not even going to get into how it sets up an implied hierarchy of intimacy where unprotected sex is higher than sex with a condom.  Or how it implies condom use is a transitory phase in a relationship.

What really throws me out of the story is that I've only rarely seen a character even mentally question the other character's declaration of non-risk.  No one seems to ask "could this person be lying to me in order to have sex?"  It makes me want to shout at the characters: Look, **I** know everything is fine because he's a romantic hero who will be worthy of you before we reach the last page, but you can't possibly know that yet!  Have some self-protective instincts!  He's a hero, he'll support and protect you if you just ask him to!

I may have occasionally said these things out loud, leading to a number of awkward conversations and at least one incident where I was asked to leave that particular coffee shop.  A true hero will never do anything to put his partner at risk, so when I see those statements in a romance novel, I know they are intended to be true.  But without the protective framing of Once upon a time and happily ever after, that's not always a guaranteed thing.  Sadly, there are still a depressingly large number of real life men who will push their partners into unprotected sex and who are often not honest about their relative health or sexual history.

Another aspect of this exchange that I find troubling is that this discussion usually takes place when the couple is in the middle of a clinch.  One of the things we've become aware of is how sexual arousal affects decision-making.  Studies have shown that horniness impairs a person's ability to make rational and well-reasoned decisions.  The level of impairment is similar to being drunk.  Like, impulse buying a bunch of commemorative plates online at three a.m. level drunk.

This led me to a chain of thoughts: individuals cannot give consent to sexual activity when they're drunk, which means they also can't give consent if their mental processes are scrambled because they were in the middle of hot foreplay.  Particularly they shouldn't be expected to give consent to riskier sexual encounters than were initially agreed to.  Especially when the relationship is still in the getting-to-know you phase when the couple don't yet know about the secret agreement to sell her vineyard or the mysterious tragic backstory that keeps him awake at night.

As you can see, I have strong opinions about this topic.  I'm hoping that more romance authors are starting to think about this particular dynamic.  Consent is becoming a bigger part of sex scenes and frequent check-ins to make sure that all partners are good with what's happening are being modeled more and more on the page.  I'm really pleased to see that, but as a reader and author, I'm ready to take the next step.

Because of my strong opinions about condom use and consent, the sex scenes in my upcoming release, Division, are structured a little differently.  In one encounter, Vincent realizes he doesn't have a condom.  Annika is waiting for him to pressure her into unprotected sex (at which point she plans to reveal that she has already bought condoms and has them ready), but instead, he calls a halt and tells her that he will go out and get some before they have sex.

To me, that is a wonderful expression of caring for and respecting your partner.  There's no implied "if you really loved and trusted me, you would be okay with proceeding without protection."  Condom use is taken as a given and my hero will do what is needed to protect her, even when that action requires a lot of willpower on his part.

I also included a scene where Vincent waits until after he's given Annika an orgasm before he pauses to make sure she's still willing to have penetrative sex.  He wants her to choose to be with him without any distractions from her body or mind.  He wants her to choose him, not just be willing to proceed with any reasonably attractive guy.

In both of these scenes, the determination to protect his partner is part of demonstrating the increasing emotional connection between the characters.  They are falling in love and discovering the intensity of having a physical and emotional bond with another person.  It's honestly the best feeling in the entire world and I wish everyone had the option of feeling it every day.  It's why I write romance.  It's why I read romance.  I believe in the power behind those feelings.

Division is up for pre-order now and will be releasing in July.  My Lalassu series is set up so that every book is a stand-alone story, but there's also a overall story arc that runs through the series.  If Division appeals to you, feel free to jump right in.  But if you'd like to start at the beginning, you can pick up the first book of the series, Revelations, for less than two dollars.

Previous post: Reclaiming My HEA: Hunkering Down (Sadly, Without Hunks)

Blog homepage

Reclaiming My HEA: Thoughts on Partnership

Reclaiming My HEA is a regular feature where I share what's been going on with my separation and divorce.

It's been a challenging month.  I'm finding myself worn out and struggling to keep up with things.  Which is not particularly surprising since I tend to work pretty solidly starting at six a.m. and going until after ten p.m.  

6-7, I'm doing household or business paperwork.  
7-9, get the kids ready for school (or weekend activities).  
9-2:30 is my day job.  
2:30 to 3:30 is my writing time.  
3:30 to 4, kids get home from school and I get them started on homework. 
4 to 4:30, walk the dog.  
4:30 to 5:30, editing (if everything is going smoothly and I'm not dealing with Bromaggeddon).  
5:30 to 6, make dinner.  
6 to 6:30, family dinner.  
6:30 to 8, making sure the kids have done what they need to do for the next day and getting them started on bedtime.  
8 to collapse, more editing.  Weekends, more editing and doing my social media and blog prep.

I'm the one who manages everything, who keeps track of appointments, makes sure we don't run out of toilet paper, and deals with all the other stuff that needs to happen to keep things running smoothly.  It's a lot of work and frankly, it hasn't been going very smoothly of late.

This week, I read an interesting article talking about how writers don't talk about the fact that the industry depends on authors having outside financial support.  (Not strictly connected, but there's also an awesome thread by Tessa Sharpe about the finances of publishing.)

The author of the article, Ann Bauer, talks about how she couldn't write in her first marriage because she was dealing with all of the responsibilities of the household, parenting, and earning an income.  Then she met her second husband and for the first time, had "a true partner."

Those three words stopped me dead in my reading.  Because I find that I can't imagine what that would be like.  I can imagine how a shapeshifting werebear would work, but I can't imagine having someone I could trust to help me with errands and responsibilities.

That's a pretty sad realization to come to.

The idea of going into the dating world is terrifying.  It wasn't particularly fun when I did it over twenty years ago.  Doing it now... not really something that I see going well.

But that's my fear talking and if decades of reading romance have taught me anything, it's that I need to listen to my hope as much as my fear.

So I'm going to take a lesson from my hopes and believe that it is possible for me to find an HEA.  Which means I will need to take some risks.  And I am strong enough to do that.

Previous Reclaiming My HEA: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Previous post: Hidden Diamond: Mary Ann Marlowe's A Crazy Kind of Love

Blog homepage

Weekly Update: February 16-22 (More RWA Updates - The Audit Report)

Weekly word count: 2731
Editing countdown: 39 chapters done for first pass through, 4 weeks to go

Let's start with the big news.  The auditor's report on what happened with the Tisdale/Davis complaint that launched the RWA shitstorm was released this week.  One of the reasons why I hung on to my RWA membership was that I wanted to see the report.  I wasn't sure it would be released to the public or restricted to members.  I've gone through the whole thing (The report itself is 58 pages, plus hefty appendices) but the law firm summarized their findings as follows:

- RWA members don't know what's actually in the Code of Ethics, including those serving on the Ethics Committee
- the Code of Ethics has been updated on an ad hoc basis, which has allowed for contradictory provisions
- the Ethics Committee failed to report on what interpretation and evidence they used to reach their conclusion
- the Board was not given the evidence and was told that they needed to accept the Ethics Committee's report or they were stating that they had no trust in the committee or its role.  They were asked to judge based on analogies that were misrepresentative, rather than the actual evidence.
- The law firm concluded that there was not evidence of personal bias against Courtney but rather a complete failure to understand and follow policy and procedures, as well as inherent flaws within those policies and procedures.

If RWA had been following their own policies, this is what should have happened:

- When Tisdale and Davis filed their initial complaints, they should have been required to submit documentation about their claims of lost business.  They also should have been advised that an ethics complaint was not the appropriate venue and told that if they wanted to pursue this, they should do so through the legal system, not RWA.  (The Code of Ethics specifically puts social media as exempt from ethics complaints, but there is a category of "invidious discrimination" which is about defaming romance as a whole and this is apparently what was used to continue the complaint.  The contradiction is one of the flaws in policy noted in the summary.)

- If it had gone through, the Ethics Committee should have asked for advice as to what the definition of "invidious discrimination" was.  They apparently pulled a definition from the Internet which was not accurate.  Invidious discrimination is a legal term with a specific definition, and if the complaint had been evaluated by that definition, it would have been clear that the complaint did not apply.

- Carol Ritter and Damon Suede were required to sign non-disclosure agreements to preserve the confidentiality of the Ethics Committee.  They interpreted these NDAs to mean that they were not able to speak to the Board of Directors about the specifics of the complaint, including the evidence presented by Tisdale and Davis.  The NDA should not have been drafted without the help of legal counsel, who also should have been clear as to the limitations. 

- Due to their interpretation of the NDA, when it came time to present the Ethics Committee's report and recommendation to the RWA Board of Directors, the only information they were given was vague generalizations and analogies, including an analogy that what Courtney had done was the equivalent of sexual harassment and creating a hostile workplace.  The Board was then told that they were not able to ask for more information without violating the confidentiality of the Ethics Committee or sending a message of distrust.  Both of these requirements are false, the Board was required as part of their duty to personally examine the evidence and determine if the recommendation was appropriate.  To blindly rely on the Ethics Committee is to give them a greater role than policy allows and creates the possibility of misuse and personal vendettas without any accountability.

Even if everything else had failed, when the Board saw the evidence, they would have been able to correct the Ethics Committee's error.  Introducing an additional interpretation to asking for more information created a subtle level of coercion to accept.  The Board could no longer judge the report strictly on its merits but were required to also consider the feelings and professional response of the Ethics Committee.

In other words, this was a full on failure of procedure due to misinterpretation, ignorance and inexperience.  And yes, I do believe that racism played a part, but if the Board or the Ethics Committee had properly understood their roles and the procedures, they could have stopped it.  (Not to place the blame solely on the Board, it's important to remember that this is the result of Tisdale and Davis making false claims in support of a racist acquisitions editor (Sue Grimshaw) and to defend a book with harmful, racist stereotypes.)  I think (and this is just my own interpretation) that while there may not have been direct evidence of personal discrimination in how the complaint was handled, it is suspicious that the three people most responsible for pushing this complaint through (Allison Kelley, Damon Suede and Carol Ritter) all seem to have disliked Courtney and had butted heads with her on previous occasions.

This complaint and the consequences were the result of people getting offended because an individual expressed her opinion on problems with a book and another individual and did so using profanity.  She was one of many people expressing concerns, including the then-President Elect of RWA, Carolyn Jewel.  Couirtney was targeted unfairly and procedure was weaponized against her.  That should not have been possible and frankly, RWA deserves the condemnation that has resulted from this disgraceful mess.

I am now waiting to vote in the March special election and see who is elected to the new Board of Directors and what direction they take.  If they choose to make RWA a place which does not tolerate bigotry and prejudice, then I will remain a member.  If the result is a wishy-washy "I'm sorry if I offended any special snowflakes" approach, then I'll be done.

I'm sure there will be more fallout.  From what I can see, the auditors did a thorough job and anyone familiar with legalese will see the "OMG this was awful" subtext throughout the report.  From what the report says, I believe that there was not a malicious, over-arching conspiracy.  Unconscious racism and personal bias, absolutely yes, but not a conspiracy.  That's good news, because you can't fight a malicious conspiracy, but you can ensure that opportunists don't have the chance to pursue personal vendettas within an organization.

So that's where things stand for now.  Moving back to the personal side, I had something very strange happen.  I drew the exact same cards for this week's Tarot as last week's Tarot, but in a slightly different order.

Last week, I drew the King of Swords, reversed, the Page of Cups, reversed, and the Four of Swords.  Injustice, escapism, and recharging.  This week I drew the King of Swords, reversed, the Four of Swords, and the Page of Cups, reversed.  (And before anyone asks, I do a very thorough shuffle between draws.)  I've never drawn the same cards twice in a row before.

The King of Swords, reversed, indicates injustice, unfairness, and intimidation.  A situation where a decision has gone against the individual.  The Page of Cups, reversed talks about concern for a child, lack of discipline causing difficulties, and wasting time and energy on pipe dreams.  The Four of Swords indicates that it is time to take a break and reevaluate, getting some distance from one's regular routine, and can indicate a medical issue that requires a stay in a hospital.

Between the three of them, it's not an optimistic draw.  The King of Swords staying consistently in the past indicates the injustice has already happened.  The Page of Cups and Four of Swords suggests that I've been wasting time on something and need a break.  Cups generally refer to emotions and swords refer to the intellect.  This draw would actually work perfectly for the RWA situation, there was an injustice against Courtney, we've wasted a lot of time with denials and obfuscation and a refusal to admit what happened, and there are certainly a large number of members who are walking away to re-evaluate what to do next.

Too much for me.  I'm going to continue to focus on my writing (which I refuse to consider a waste of time).

Celebrating Different Voices and Finding The Time To Create

If you follow me on Twitter or Instagram, you've probably noticed that I like posting quotes during the week.

On Mondays, I'll post something about writing, either a morale booster to keep working even when it seems difficult, or insight into famous and successful authors' writing process (#MondayMotivation).  On Tuesdays, I'll post an excerpt from song lyrics celebrating love in all its wondrous and terrifying glory (#TuesdayTunes).  On Wednesdays, I post a line or two from my work in progress (#WIPWednesday).  Thursdays, I pick a quote from a TV show or movie that I enjoy (#ThrowbackThursday).  And Fridays, I chose a quote about being in love, going through life, or finding hope when things are hard (#FridayFeels).

But there's one thing that all of these posts have in common.  I always look for something attributed to a woman (and for the record, I am using the word "woman" in its broadest sense to include anyone who identifies as a woman or female-presenting).  It can be surprisingly hard sometimes.  When I search a subject, I'll often find dozens of quotes by men with only one or two by a woman.

My superpower is continuing to speak when
a man has already said something similar.

I don't think that anyone would argue that history has been dominated by male voices (and only a very small subset of those voices).  But it can be discouraging to see how much our culture is still dominated by masculine opinions and perspectives.

And yet, there are other voices out there.  They're not getting the same time and attention, but they are speaking up in steadily increasing numbers.  Still, they never quite seem to gain the same traction, no matter how passionate, talented, and loud they are.

Last summer, I read a Guardian article by Brigid Schulte about how women are often not able to gain the same stretches of uninterrupted time that their male counterparts can.  Women tend to work around other people's schedules, trying to manage the social labor of making sure everyone feels appreciated and heard.  They still take on a disproportionate share of household chores and are expected to deal with the day to day challenges (like calling the plumber or picking up a new set of pots or any other small errands that seem to add up into massive tasks.)

I'm deliberately not mentioning children and childcare, even though that is also mostly on women's plate, whether they do paid work or not.  Kids will certainly disrupt a schedule and while they can be taught independence, it always seems to fail as soon as the parent has something else they need to do.  However, most of the mothers I know want to care for and nurture their kids (maybe not all the time, but it's usually one of the big reasons they had children in the first place).  That said, most of the mothers I know also greatly appreciate getting time away from their kids to reconnect with their own dreams.

I grew up with the "women can have it all" mantra, which implied that everything was possible if only the woman was organized enough and didn't "waste" her precious time doing something non-productive.

Except women should not be expected to exhaust themselves in order to earn the right to pursue their dreams.

I'm not sure what the solution is.  But I can do a small part by choosing to promote their ideas and words as a reminder that there are a lot of very talented women out there and if their production of amazing art is limited by the other responsibilities they have, then it makes what they do create even more incredible.

Previous post: Heroine Fix: Rebel, Spy and Princess - Let's look at Leia

Blog homepage

Reclaiming My HEA: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Reclaiming My HEA is a monthly feature talking about my progress through my separation and divorce.

The holidays were challenging for me.  Maybe it was just the usual family-oriented stress but I found myself dealing with a fair amount of depression.


I want to believe that great things are ahead for me.  That all of the hard work I've done to reclaim this part of my life will let me move forward into a happier, more connected life.  But I've spent a long time trying to manage my expectations and shrinking my dreams to fit into what I thought was possible.

At a deep level, in order to keep going, I had to convince myself that it wasn't possible for things to be better.  That real life meant compromise and settling.

Maybe having to break those reduced expectations is what triggered the anxiety and depression.  Humans do better when things are predictable.  Even if what they're predicting is absolutely horrible, it's easier to manage awful known catastrophes than dealing with uncertainty of not knowing what will happen next.

I don't know what will happen next.  Maybe I will find myself alone and I'll need to find a way to be okay with that.  Maybe I will find someone who makes me happy, and maybe it will work out and maybe it won't.  I can't know unless I try.

Trying is scary.  It means opening myself up to rejection, and a particularly personal rejection at that.  So it's okay if I take my time.  I don't need to rush and push myself into more stress than I can handle.

Because no matter what happens in the future, I need to take care of myself.

Previous Reclaiming My HEA: Is Everyone Else Right When They Say They Wouldn't Date Again?

Previous post: Hidden Diamond: Reluctant Royals from Alyssa Cole

Blog homepage

Growing Up Is Overrated

I've just finished watching the documentary Never Surrender, about the fandom around the movie Galaxy Quest and it has reminded me of something very important.

Being able to get excited about something that we care about is the great gift of life.

I can't count the number of times that someone has told me that someday I'm going to have to grow up.  Usually what they mean is that I will need to stop enjoying things that I love.  No more buying action figures.  Or talking for hours about a show or movie.  Or wearing costumes and wigs to pretend to be a character.  These are usually people who say they like who I am, but just want me to be a quieter, more sedate version of myself.  One that doesn't embarrass them with my general lack of coolness.

Groot thinks I'm cool.

And you know what?  I have grown up.  And I have realized that the problem was never my inherent geekiness.  It was a culture that prizes cynicism over enthusiasm.

To that I borrow a line from Adam Savage: I reject your reality and substitute my own.  And my reality is full of amazing, fun things that I am desperately passionate about and enjoy sharing with others.  And then there are other amazing, fun things that other people are passionate about and I want to know about those things, too.  Sometimes I won't end up feeling the same way, but I can be happy for them.  And they can be happy for me and we all end up having a great time.

For me, that is the true strength of geek culture.  It's built on love.  (Which is probably why I feel that geek culture and romance culture fit well together.)

The Villainesses dance troupe

Galaxy Quest struck a powerful chord because at its heart, it's about geek culture.  It's about loving something so much that it becomes real in our minds, even when we know it's fiction.  It's about wanting to share that love with other fans and anyone who was even a little bit involved with the original, be they actors, directors, writers, anything.  It's why I go to Comic Con every year, because even though the cast and crew are often far less enamored of the final product than the fans, there is something magical about getting behind the scenes glimpses. 

The documentary reminded me of how far we've come.  Geeking out about something was shameful for most of my adolescence and adulthood.  We were the punchline of the joke, be it the Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons or the guys on The Big Bang Theory.  Now we're too far in the mainstream to be pushed to the side.  But there are still plenty of people who look down on the freaks in their costumes with their collectibles.

Of course, most of those people have their own fandoms.  Maybe it's music, or sports, or gardening, or baking, or science.  But it's something they're passionate about and that brings them joy in their lives.  No one should have to live a passionless life.

My passion happens to include six inch poseable figures, movies and shows full of special effects, and convention centers with thousands of people in costumes.  And I'm okay with that.  Just like I'm okay with my passion for stories that end with dreams coming true.

Previous post: Heroine Fix: Bluffing With Molly Bloom

Blog homepage

Release Day Thoughts

Yesterday, Deadly Potential made its way out into the world.

This is my fifth release day for a new novel and I've discovered that these days go a little differently than I would have thought.

Before my first novel released, I thought I'd be overjoyed with excitement on release day, full of tons of extra energy.  And I am excited.  I like getting to share my stories with people.

But release day is also overwhelming.  It's a lot to put something I've worked so hard on out into the world and ask strangers to exchange their hard-earned money for it.  (And hopefully have them enjoy it!)

For my first few releases, I left a lot of work to the last minute and then discovered I didn't have the energy to deal with it in a timely matter.  This time, I planned a lot more in advance and found things went a whole lot smoother.

There's a number of things that I do for a new release.  But my favourite is my chapter by chapter author commentary (Under the Covers).  When I feel tired and overwhelmed, the memories in the commentary remind me of how eager I was at the beginning of the writing process and the good times I had along the way.

I hope that my readers appreciate it, too.

Family Stories

This week I got word that my grandmother in Calgary has begun a decline.  She has had health issues and dementia for the last few years, so it's not a particular surprise, but it is sad.  She's always been the family historian for that side of the family, sharing the stories about her parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and so on.

I think most families have this person.  The person who tells funny, interesting, or meaningful stories about other family members.  Sometimes, if a family is lucky, that person isn't reliant only on their own memories (or family gossip) but has a treasure trove of stories passed down through generations.  They're not always entirely accurate, but they can make a big difference about how a family defines themselves.

A lot of our family history defines ourselves as explorers.  We've frequently picked up and moved on to find new opportunities.  Family legend claims that one of our ancestors was on the first Norse ships to cross to Greenland and Vinland (probably Nova Scotia).  More recent records show the crossing of my great-great-grandfather and his brothers, who settled in Drumheller, Alberta and found brides, including three sisters.  (A plot bunny that will probably remain out of my reach as a writer for the forseeable future.)  

We have a long tradition of military and government service, travelling across the world.  There is a long-running joke in our family about the Family Postal Service, which I've used on more than one occasion.  My son lost his favourite toy when he was ten, and we discovered that it was no longer sold in North America.  However, it was available at a store in Spain.  One relative went to the store, and picked up the toy.  Another relative carried the toy from Spain to England.  A third relative brought it from England to Halifax, where it was driven up to us in Ottawa by a fourth relative.  (All significantly faster and more reliable than Amazon shipping, in my opinion.)

To me, family is a concept of far reaching tentacles that expand far beyond the typical range of siblings and cousins.  I get updates from around the world during the holidays.

This kind of closeness wouldn't happen without the shared stories.  It makes us more than a collection of random strangers with linked DNA.  Our roots aren't in particular locations, but in our bonds with one another, most of which come from the stories we swap.

My aunt and several of my cousins have spent the last few years trying to write down my grandmother's stories, to ensure they live on after her.  And interestingly, even though my grandmother often fails to recognize people, she can still tell a great story.

It's sad for me to think of my grandmother's passing, but it gives me some comfort to know that she'll live on in our stories, the same way she's made long-dead relatives live on in hers.

Previous post: Heroine Fix: Striking The Right Note With Sophie from Music and Lyrics

Blog homepage

Shameless self-promo: my latest romantic suspense release, Deadly Potential: A Special Investigations Case File, coming October 23 and available for pre-order now!

How Much Is This Worth? A look at what goes into making a book

Recently, as I was going through Twitter, I ran across a series of posts from frustrated readers complaining about the price of books.  Specifically, about a publisher who used to price books in the $3-$5 range, but is now pricing in the $10-$12 range.  There was a response from an editor at one of the larger publishers explaining that while they could understand the frustration, readers also needed to recognize that a lot of work goes into producing the books they enjoy reading.  The editor finished with a plea for understanding, that the publishing world doesn't do things to deliberately spite or drive away readers.  They are a business and businesses can't operate on the devoted love of their fans.

It'd be nice if being awesome covered rent... but we're not there yet.

As someone who was coming of age during the time of Napster, I remember the seductiveness of it.  Downloading a digital copy (usually of a song I already owned on CD at first) made it so easy to put together the music I loved.  I justified it to myself, saying that I didn't have a lot of money, and it was greedy of the big music corporations to ask me to spend $10-$20 on a CD with a dozen songs, only a few of which I actually liked.

Then someone said something to me that changed how I saw it forever.  That yes, maybe the corporations were greedy and only paying their artists pennies on the dollar, so that the artist I loved was only getting a dime from my $10 purchase.  By refusing to buy it, I was denying the Evil Corporation its $9.90.  But I was also denying the artist their dime.  And I needed to remember that most artists needed those dimes if they were going to continue to make art.

It was an eye-opener.  And as I became one of those dime-hungry artists myself, I started to see how not paying that $10 affected more than just the person whose name is on the front of the creation.

A book is more than just the author's creation.

There are editors, usually several of them for each book, all spending a significant amount of time (weeks and sometimes months) on very painstaking and sometimes tedious work.  (I would not be able to spend my professional career searching for misplaced commas for a line edit.)

There is the cover illustrators, who are artists themselves and deserve proper recompense.

There are the support staff.  All of the people who keep the business running and who make sure readers and vendors know about the amazing books that are out there.

And we can't forget the author, who has likely spent months, if not years, in the process of creating the story.

When looked at from that angle, there are a lot of people who are putting a lot of time and energy into creating a book (and this doesn't change according to the format, whether digital, physical or audio).  They all need to be paid out of that $10.

So now I want to say something to those who are upset about book prices.  I get it.  Times are tough and money doesn't stretch very far.

But when you see a publisher charging $10-$12 for an ebook, instead of thinking the publisher is trying to take advantage of readers, please think of it as a publisher who is treating their staff and authors with respect, and paying them for their work.

Hidden Talents

For this week's blog post, I thought I'd take a trip down one of the "what if" thought paths that inspire my writing.

All hope abandon, yadda, yadda, yadda...

I often find myself wondering what hidden talents people have.  Not just the skills they posses but don't publicize (like when I found out a friend of mine worked as a professional magician's assistant for two years), but talents that they themselves don't know they have.

How many of us have talents that we never know about because we're never put in a situation where we would know about them?

Maybe that businesswoman picking up a double shot of expresso would be a skilled hunter with superior spear throwing abilities.  Maybe there's a child in a developing country who could solve the unified field equation or who could create a brilliant new coding language.

I first started thinking about such hidden talents when I learned the story of Arthur Currie (not Aquaman, an actual Canadian who served in World War II).  He wasn't particularly exceptional, until he found himself in the trenches and discovered he had a talent for large battlefield logistics.  His tactical plans led to several pivotal victories.  If he had lived at a different time and place, no one would have ever known he had such skills.

This is one of the aspects I love about post-apocalyptic storylines, the idea of people discovering strengths in themselves they've never suspected.  (Okay, I also love it in a lot of other stories, too.)

In JMS's Midnight Nation, the characters visit a vault where all of the undone projects are.  The really funny novel that Dostoevsky was going to write when he was done being so depressing.  Einstein's unified field theory.  Light-weight tornado-proof construction material that could be made out of recycling.  Renewable, sustainable energy sources.  All undiscovered because the people who would have thought of them took different paths in life.  The idea of this kind of sanctuary of the unknown fascinates me.

Some of my friends find the concept of unknown talents to be depressing.  The idea that someone could spend their lives in mediocrity, never known that they could have been exceptional in some way, bothers them.  I find it has the opposite effect on me.  No matter how many challenges grind a person down, everyone still has the potential to be transcendent.  And it gives me the courage to try things even when I don't think I'll be very good at them, because what if this is the key that unlocks one of my hidden talents?

To me, the real shame would be if I never gave myself a chance.

Previous blog post: Seeing Ourselves in DC's Sara Lance 

Blog homepage

Facing Our Own Blindspots

We all have things we take for granted in life.  Most of them are pretty basic: the sun will rise and set each day, the earth is round, and I will always stick the USB stick in the wrong way the first time I try to plug it in.  Sometimes those assumptions are more problematic.

For example, if this person assumed their coffee was on their left.

On Tuesday, I re-released the first Spirit Sight short story, Whispers In the Dark.  I wrote it back in 2015 and at the time, I wasn't terribly happy with the editing I'd received but as a newbie author, I assumed they knew what they were doing and I didn't.  When I wrote the final installment of the trilogy last year, I knew that I wanted to have Whispers and Rose re-edited.  Nothing big but they needed a final polish to make sure they shone.

I hired a wonderful and talented editor, Cait Gordon of Dynamic Canvas.  I knew she was thorough and found her to have the rare talent of making me excited to receive and work on my edits.  But there was one aspect which surprised me and that was the additional work she did as a sensitivity reader.

I'd known she did sensitivity reads but I'd rather arrogantly assumed that she wouldn't find anything in my work.  After all, I consider myself a fairly liberal person and I take active steps to learn from different marginalized groups to avoid using harmful stereotypes and tropes.  To my humbling realization, Cait did find some unconscious assumptions in my language choices, particularly around the topic of mental health and intelligence.  (And to give full credit to Cait, I'm sure she must have been frustrated to see those choices popping up as frequently as they did but she explained the concerns in a gracious and comprehensive way.)

Some of the fixes were incredibly simple, eg, not using "crazy" as a shorthand for uncontrolled circumstances or strong emotional reactions.  But there was one that required me to do some unflinching examination of my own thought processes: the assumption that to be smarter is to be better.

In retrospect, it is perhaps unsurprising that I picked up that particular bias.  As a nerdy, non-athletic child, academics were my opportunity to shine.  It was one of the few areas in my childhood where I received praise from the adults around me.  I learned very quickly that to appear to effortlessly pick up skills and information was a desirable quality.  Later, I was placed in the "gifted" program, where we were often told we were the leaders of the future, destined to use our intelligence to do great things for the world.  Add in a multi-generation trend of perfectionism and declarations that tiny flaws would "ruin" otherwise marvelous events or creations and I was firmly installed on the train of Brains Over Brawn.

Cait explained how many of the terms we see in everyday language, such as fool, stupid, idiot, etc., all began life as pejorative terms for those with mental handicaps.  And as someone who flinches whenever someone uses misogynistic language, even if it's not directed at me, I realized that if I didn't change my ableist language, I would be inflicting the same stings on others.

However, I soon realized that avoiding such language did not come easily to me.  I had to spend a few days really breaking down my thought process to see why I tended to default to seeing making mistakes or not easily picking things up as such a negative character trait.  And like so many assumptions about character, it turned out that my own assumptions were based on flawed interpretations and wish-fulfillment.

I was good at being smart.  I was also bullied for being smart and for not being good at other things.  That led me to want to believe that being smart was better than being good at those other things.  This was reinforced by teachers and other academically-minded adults in my life.  It was further reinforced by general society and the books and shows I watched, many of which had the "bullied child grows up to be better than those who taunted them" theme.  I watched characters who were smarter be praised and those who weren't be used as the punchline of jokes.  The point of stories like Inspector Gadget, Get Smart, or Forrest Gump was that it was funny that a less intelligent person managed to succeed.  And often they had a smarter sidekick quietly making sure of that success.

Undoing that complicated web of experience is an ongoing task.  Sometimes I still catch myself using ableist language.  And I'm sure that there are times I use it and don't catch it, which makes me feel horrible at the thought that I've likely hurt people without realizing it.

Because at the end of the day, that's why we should strive to do better: so that we don't unintentionally hurt people.  (If you're deliberately hurting people, that's a whole other problem.)  It can be easy to lose sight of that in a knee-jerk reaction of defensiveness (that's not what I meant, they're being too sensitive).  It's reassuring to tell ourselves that we didn't really cause harm.  It means we're still good people and don't have to do any work.  But it doesn't change the fact that harm has happened.  And the more that a person insists that it didn't when faced with examples and offered education, the harder it is give them the benefit of the doubt.

Perhaps I'm naive, but I do truly believe that the vast majority of people don't want to cause hurt.  But I also realize that the same majority isn't always great at accepting they've made mistakes.  As a recovering perfectionist, allow me to reassure us all that the world doesn't fall apart if we're wrong.  And that being aware doesn't suck the fun and creativity out of life, in fact, it adds to it because it means that people can just enjoy the story without worrying about the sting.

Previous post: Hidden Diamond: The 10 Carat Eve Langlais

Blog homepage