April has been quite a month so far, for lots of reasons, and I haven’t done any reading aside from work stuff ☹, but my wife and child and I took a trip to Bryce Canyon, and as stressful as a long car trip is with all the logistics and arrangements, it was still amazing. I’m so grateful that we had the ability to visit, and even to ride horses (and I am also grateful I remembered how to ride a horse! It’s been a really long time! Yes it hurt the next day!).
As promised, here’s a picture!
and I’m putting more in an instagram post if you want to go check them out. None of these pictures are of me, because (a) I was the only person in our family who could simultaneously ride a horse and take pictures and (b) both Bryce Canyon and my family are far more photogenic.
With that burst of Bryce Canyon energy, I completed my revision of Seaglass Tide last week and sent it to readers for comment. I’ve worked on it for a long time, so if this version doesn’t go the way I’m hoping, I’m going to let it sit in a corner for a while and decide where to go with it next. I want to try some new things and new stories. But I did love spending more time with Crane Moon – a new Crane Moon, long after the initial duology closes – and I loved writing more about Aili, who got more time in this revision. She also got her own playlist for the first time!
Someone asked me what I do with my playlists. They’re actually part of my writing process, not for advertising the story, and they don’t have a consistent vibe or style to them, so I can’t promise any musical revelations. I grow them as I’m working through story problems, from a seed of a general sense of “this is what this character would like to listen to” and “this is what this character’s emotional journey is like.” When I get stuck or want to get into a character’s mind, I go for long walks listening to their playlists and just free-associate, and almost always that jogs something free. I take songs away from the list as their arc refines and some songs don’t fit anymore, and add more when I discover more depth or unexpected things.
In my playlist for my other current WIP, my sapphic fantasy mapmakers, some movements from Mozart’s Requiem show up near the end, largely because of the words of the Latin service, especially deliver them from the mouth of the lion. And that’s about something in the story, and an aspect of one of the characters, that I didn’t know about until very late in my last revision.
And then I added “Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie right afterwards, because some lines struck me as capturing the theme of the book:
Cause love’s such an old-fashioned word
And love dares you to care for the people on the edge of the night
And love dares you to change our way of caring about ourselves
This is our last dance, this is ourselves
Under pressure.
In this story (and also in life, I think), love is not just romance; the experience of love makes our world wider, dares us to care for those who are less powerful or safe than we may be, to take risks, and to resist. That last dance, under pressure, is how we decide who we are and who we’re willing to be in the world.
This new book is fully drafted and also in revision (actually revision number 5, according to my notes). It’s not a queernorm story, where queer people are simply taken for granted and their relationships are safe; it’s specifically set in a world that persecutes queer and trans people. And that’s very relevant to those under pressure lines, and a lot of what I’m thinking about as I work on this story and simultaneously live my life.
I have a whole lot of thoughts about this, about queerness, queer joy, queernorm and resistance, but they deserve a much better essay than I can manage today! It’s been marinating for a while in my mind, though, so I’ll be figuring out how to write it, and I’m setting myself a little reading project of exploring queer (and especially sapphic) science fiction and fantasy that’s set in non-queernorm worlds. Let me know if you have recommendations!
Thanks to everyone who has been book shopping – if you haven’t picked up The Phoenix and the Sword yet, the ebook is currently .99 through the end of April on all platforms! I have a secret sales goal for 2025, which I secretly think is attainable. And if that magic number rolls up, I will definitely have a celebration and it’ll involve something special for my newsletter subscribers! Meanwhile, if you haven’t picked up your free Phoenix prequel chapters yet, remember they’re always here for you. Be well and take care!
Ah, I LOVE Bryce Canyon! And congrats on finishing the book revision.