On February 15 2019, in the evening and snow, I went out to pick up a pair of two-day old kittens. Which makes today their one-year birthday.

There is a post up at CCI with a general update, as I usually write them. What I don’t say is how both boys absolutely saved me. Losing Gus was beyond devastating–it was traumatizing, something that has stayed with me ever since. Shawn’s birthday is bittersweet because his brother should be here too.

Gus was a bit fluffier than Shawn, and I think he would’ve had slightly longer hair, and with a big ruff around his neck. He’d be more slender, maybe a little taller. He’d’ve found a way onto the kitchen cabinets by four months old and baffled Shawn, who would of course have assumed his brother went missing. There would be hundreds of new photos continuing to chronicle his growth, and everyone would be amazed that a 57g premie neonate–half the weight a kitten his age should’ve been–would grow to such a beautiful big cat. He’d be just as clingy with me as Shawn is, and I’d somehow have to share my pillow with twenty pounds of cat instead of the current eleven. And I would sleep better, because I wouldn’t have the memory him struggling to breathe in an oxygen tent while that heart, too big for his body and this world, was failing.

So today we celebrated Shawn’s one-year birthday. I picked up presents from his Twitter friends, and he got new toys from me. He got to have kitten milk as a treat and ate canned food all day. He’s so spoiled as it is, he has no idea today is anything other than a regular day. But it’s impossible for me to forget that Gus was that perfect wave that returned to the ocean too soon, and I miss him tremendously.

Shawn is the best-natured cat (I keep wanting to call him kitten, but he’s a grownup now) anyone could ask for and my constant companion, the absolute light of my life. He’s not very good at catting, but he has an amazing understanding of human vocabulary and gestures. He’s trusting (except when I trim his claws) and codependent and absolutely perfect.

His survival is a miracle and some days I think I am only breathing myself because I have him at my side. Gus should also be turning one year today, but I am never not grateful to still have Shawnie.

So many kittens could have the chance to be a Shawn for someone like me if they had caregivers who knew how to raise orphaned neonates. Please, in honor of him and Gus, consider fostering for your local shelter or rescue, and offer neonatal supplies that are crucial to a kitten’s survival.

It’s release day! Zara’s post-Oblivion novella is now available everywhere in ebook.

I’m offline most of this week–I find the constant stream of news really exhausting and sometimes lose a few workdays to email. That was not well planned for a release week, but I don’t think any level of promo I do makes that much of a difference–there’s a handful of people that buy and I don’t think they need me to remind them.

Today is Zara’s part of the First Dates (that end badly) line of stories. If you recognize what the title is based on, you get a cookie (it’s also revealed in the first chapter).

Snarky vampire Zara Lain decides to end a dry spell by doing something new: she asks out her saber-tooth cat’s veterinarian for drinks.

The guy is nice. The date goes well.

And then all hell breaks loose.

An old enemy is back and willing to do anything to make her save him from an assassination attempt–bribes, threats, and even making her the new target.

Kindle | Kobo | Nook | iBooks | Payhip

And then, tomorrow, we’ve got Blood Ties on Patreon!

Maybe I’m not the right person to write this kind of post given some of my creative choices.

I have always believed in the right ending as opposed to a happy one–sometimes the right one is happy, but my characters often have so much shit to work through it realistically would take a long time to get there (one of the reasons why Livi’s series needs so many books). Demons of Oblivion ended the way it did in part because I stopped after the first arc instead of what I had planned, but even then those books would never be a typical HEA kind of thing for all the characters. That’s a symptom of who I was when I was writing them and the things I work through with those books.

So, again, perhaps I am hypocritical for saying this, but: I am fucking sick of the cynical choice in fiction.

The latest annoyance is this: New Nancy Drew comic celebrates beloved sleuth’s 90th birthday by killing her. (And having the Hardy Boys investigate.)

The all-male creative team has quickly backtracked to say “Oh no, you’re misunderstanding, it’s not what it seems” (after at least one of them got his panties in a bunch and started blocking everyone on Twitter who said WTF, and complaining folks should have to “read before judging”*).

That’s not good enough.

If no one working on this had the awareness that marketing an anniversary edition of a beloved, inspiring female icon’s story as KILLING HER AND HAVING MEN INVESTIGATE was a bad idea, they should not have been involved.

We do not create in a vacuum, and when you’re taking on a character like Nancy Drew, you need to feel the weight of that. You need to understand her place in the world, and I’m sorry but I do not believe men can fully grasp that (any more than I could fully grasp an icon to people of color as a white woman).

I, like many, was really excited last year when Veronica Mars came back for a new season.

You’d think after Twin Peaks, I would’ve learned my lesson (essentially, you can’t go home again–nothing good comes from these revivals), but no, I sat down to binge-watch it…and right from the start things were niggling me. Not that I could put my finger on it, but my storyteller sense was tingling. I stop midway through to google, and I was right–they were going to kill Logan at the end. Right after Veronica married him and was happy.

The defense, of course, was it was necessary to re-trauamtize the heroine–who at this point has been raped, nearly killed repeatedly, lied to, dealt with the murder of her best friend, etc–to continue telling the story. That a woman being in a happy relationship “kills” the story.

It’s the cynical choice. It is also the lazy one.

This choice with Nancy Drew brought to mind HydraCap–making an explicitly anti-Nazi character into a Nazi because *mumble mumble*story reasons*mumble mumble*. Or the choices to make Superman gritty and dark in Man of Steel.

It is not lost on me that these choices to re-traumatize or fridge (or threaten to fridge) heroines and make heroes more ambiguous is done by (seemingly all white?) cis men. Because the ones who typically hold the most power rarely think about the myriad of ways it can be used to harm, and because for them a story is only interesting if it ends in pain.

But the rest of us do not live in a good world. We do not live in a just world.

We live in a world where there is suffering and oppression at every street corner. Where everyone is struggling. Where people spouting Nazi ideals are in all forms of government. Where the divide between the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless, is bigger than ever. Where the world is literally on fire and melting and the Doomsday clock is rapidly ticking toward midnight.

We live in a world that needs heroes.

We do not need another “gritty” story. Killing off Nancy Drew (or marketing your story that way), a heroine beloved for generations and who has inspired countless girls and women, is not a brave choice. Giving Veronica Mars a taste of happiness and then blowing up her husband was not a brave choice. Taking your power as a storyteller and wielding it to uphold the status quo is not the brave choice.

Pain and suffering and trauma is already the default. It’s what we live with every day.

Hope is brave.

Happiness is brave.

Justice is brave.

You have choices as a storyteller. You can tread the same ground over and over…or you can change things. You can push yourself to gain the skills to tell the kind of story that inspires rather than hurts. You can transmute reality into something better than reflecting all the bad. You can shine a beacon of light into the darkness of this world.

And if you choose laziness and cynicism–if you choose the status quo–do not be surprised when your audience leaves you for storytellers making a braver choice.

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*No one ever has to read something before judging. Part of marketing is telling people why they want to read your thing; if they then decide, based on that marketing, “No I don’t want to read that thing”, they are well within their rights. I don’t need to do heroin to know it’s bad for me, thanks.