This Week's Topic Made Me Laugh

That's a sucky title, but it's all that I've got in me today. I say that with a smile, though. I've been working really hard on copy edits while living in a house that's mid-remodel, so I'm just glad that I'm still holding it all together. 

But, yes. When I saw this week's topic, I literally laughed out loud. Should you speak your mind on social media regarding politics or keep your tongue? 

First--I have never kept my tongue when it comes to political injustices, and I never will.

That's what made me laugh.

Second--Silence is often a privilege. Being able to live in a mental and physical state where you don't have to speak out about politics or injustices is something that's not afforded to many. A little backlash about our political and social views is nothing compared to what marginalized people face daily. If we--the privileged--don't speak up, that puts the onus on those who are affected most by certain political agendas.

Do you know how hard that is?

I don't let my friends fight alone, and when old white men try to take away anyone's rights, yes, I'm going to be vocal as hell.

Third--Authors are real people. We have opinions. We hungrily seek out facts. And, we mirror the world around us, creating a reflection called Fiction. Literature is political, y'all. It always has been. And if readers follow me, they're going to know where I stand and therefore won't be surprised when they read my books. 

So that's that. I'm not silent, and I never will be.

We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. ~ Elie Wiesel

 

XOXO,

Social Media, Politics, and the New Etiquette

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is "Social Media and politics: Should you speak your mind or keep your tongue?"

So, once upon a time, friends and neighbors, this used to be a subject for actual debate. Social media was new, the internet itself was new, and we had a lot of conversations that involved determining the etiquette of this new, virtual world. Especially where social media was concerned, there was a lot of advice-giving around establishing a persona/brand. Many of us first adopted social media as a way to gain viewers/readers. I joined Facebook and Twitter originally to funnel people into reading my newly created blog. So we treated social media as a kind of moving billboard for ourselves. 

Accordingly, we focused on creating a non-controversial, attractive persona/brand. We also took the longstanding holiday dinner etiquette of staying away from money, religion, and politics. It was the approach of someone who wanted to maintain family connection enough to hold their tongue for a few hours - and then depart to go live an unedited life after.

Well, a funny thing happened as the internet grew and more people adopted social media: it became a globally connected form of communication. News could be transmitted immediately, from people directly involved. Grassroots efforts became more effective than ever. It became more difficult to hide or suppress injustices. 

In ecology, we talk about the predator-prey cycle. If there are too many coyotes, they eat all the rabbits. Because there are no more rabbits, the coyotes die off and the population diminishes. With fewer coyotes around, the rabbit population bounces back - and so follows the coyote population. 

Well, those interested in perpetuating injustice, feeling thwarted by the power of the internet to drag their nasty business into the scorching light of social disapproval, countered by developing an elaborate misinformation effort. The internet and social media shared damaging information? Well, they would kill it by flooding social media with so much false and misleading information that people wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

And so the cycle continues.

I don't know if I'm a rabbit or a coyote - it could depend on the day - but I do know that the way I combat the flood of misinformation is by being authentic. I don't feel we have the luxury of presenting a bland persona to the online world. If we don't speak up, then we create a silence that allows other voices to dominate. We're not talking about a family dinner that lasts a few hours. This IS our lives, day in and day out. If we choose to hold our tongues in the name of seducing readers with a blandly non-offensive position, then we're choosing to live edited lives - and to allow the blowhards to dominate the conversation. We can't afford to hold our tongues, even for a few hours. 

Turns out, family dinners have gotten a lot more contentious, too. Frankly, I think that's a good thing. Harmony that comes from voices being silenced is no harmony at all. 

Worldbuilding and Political Landscapes

 

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is politics and - no, wait! Come back!!

Politics in FICTION, okay???

We're asking how politics and the political landscape of the world flavor the outcome of stories.

This is my particular catnip as the political landscape of my books is always as important - if not more so - than other facets of the worlds I build. I even teach a workshop called "Worldbuilding: Political Systems in Conflict." Why politics? Because they are about the conflicts that affect an entire society - and societies beyond them, too. As we've all learned from the political turmoil of recent years, politics affects the bedrock of our lives, our very rights as sentient beings. 

So, I argue that the political landscape is always going to flavor a story, perhaps more profoundly than the actual landscape. Sure, some stories try to present themselves as absent of politics, but basics aspects of the characters' lives - access to food, housing, education, etc. - are always going to be influenced by the political landscape.

Right now I'm looking at the release of Book #2 in my Bonds of Magic series - BRIGHT FAMILIAR releases on July 9! - and so I'm getting impassioned messages from early readers. Often when I wake up in the morning, because they're staying awake all night reading it. (Best compliment there is!) Many of them are commenting about the power dynamics and how much resonance they have - on a personal and sexual basis, but also on a societal level. When I set out to write Book #1, DARK WIZARD, I wanted to portray an entire society based on a fundamental, incontrovertible power imbalance. In the Convocation, all political power derives from the ability to wield magic. Wizards can. Familiars have magic, but can't use it - so they become the ones who are used. 

As with all of us, the politics of who has the power affects what rights we have - and which we don't. In life, love, and the pursuit of all that is worthwhile. 

     

He wanted her with consuming passion... and so did the monster within.

Lady Veronica Elal has been freed from her tower—and entered a life of servitude. It doesn’t matter that her wizard master has odd ideas about circumventing Convocation tradition and making their relationship equal. Nic prides herself on her practicality and that means not pretending her marriage is full of hearts and flowers. Besides she understands that, despite her new husband’s idealism, they face obstacles so great the pair of them could be crushed to nothing, even without dashing themselves brainless trying to fight the Convocation.

Lord Gabriel Phel has come this far against impossible odds. He was born with powerful wizard magic, the first in his family in generations. He’s managed to begin the process of reinstating his fallen house. And—having staked his family’s meager fortune to win a familiar to amplify his magic, a highborn daughter to be mother to his children, his lady, and lover—he rescued Nic in a distant land, successfully bringing her home to House Phel. Though she’s cynical about their chances of success, he’s certain they can defy their enemies and flourish. Together.

But, the more Gabriel discovers about working with the fiery Nic, attempting to learn the finer points of wizardry and marriage, the more illicit fantasies plague him. His need for Nic—and the dark cravings she stirs in his black wizard’s heart—grow daily. Though Nic has reconciled herself to being possessed by Gabriel—and indeed yearns for even more from her brooding and reluctant master—creating a new life for herself isn’t easy. Especially when Gabriel seems determined to subvert the foundation of her world. Starting with her father.

A Place for Politics

Remember group projects in high school? Or maybe it was in a college class. Or around the meeting table at your first job. You had an idea. A good one. You started talking. Everyone was looking at you. And then one of the other people started talking. As if you weren't speaking. All those people who you thought had been paying attention blink and turn away.

No one ever asked you to finish your thought. No one ever asked to hear your idea. It's as if you didn't even exist.

If you're  better human being than I am, you don't stand up and scream, "Oh my GOD WILL YOU LET ME FINISH?"  (FYI - this rarely actually gets your ideas listened to. It may get security called. Only once did a manager laugh and tell the developer trying to talk over me that he'd earned getting yelled at.)

If you've ever said "I wish *insert famous person name here* would stop talking politics and go back to . . . " you're guilty of doing to them what was to you. (Guys, help me out here - I have someone suggesting this being talked over thing only happens to women and minorities. Rebuttals??)

This is the long way of saying that my beliefs and I are a package deal. That's why if you read my books - especially my sci fi, you know my politics and most of my belief systems. If you're on my personal Facebook page, you know my politics. I won't hide because life is too short to live on mute. I mean to live my life out loud. Too much time and energy has gone to making sure other people were comfortable, whether I was or not. Maybe I'm just all out of fucks to give because my loyalty isn't to anyone party or person. It's to ideals. Rights. Equal protection for all people under the law. Very strict separation of church and state.

I think that one of the great things about living in the United States is that you are called by your civil duty to participate in the democratic process. Plenty of people abdicate that responsibility. Fine. That, too, is a right. But frankly, anyone with a pulse has the right to an opinion and the right to voice it. I suspect that when well-known people take heat for expressing their opinions, it's because someone envies the platform and reach (not to mention it's only when the opinion disagrees with someone's preconceived notions.) No one says, 'I wish famous person x would shut up.' when the opinions agree. Which is code for, 'I'm uncomfortable and I don't want to be forced to examine my thoughts and beliefs!' I get it. It's not easy. But the last time it was legit for any of us to express that kind of discomfort it was because we were doing unspeakable things to our diapers.

So you'll likely also see on my Facebook page that I don't shut down political opinions that differ from my own. Because I want my thinking challenged. Not that I'm above participating in the world wide call upon witches to spell cast Saturday. The stated goal is to bind the current US administration from doing any further harm. I prefer something more colorful, I think. Maybe a spell inspired by a new Chuck Tingle title. I'll leave the content of the spell to your imagination.

Any spell suggestions? Or requests? (Remember the genie in Aladdin - I won't kill anyone and I won't bring anyone back from the dead . . .)

Should Authors Comment on Politics?

This photo didn't come out in focus - too dark - but I'm sharing it anyway because the moment of this full supermoon rising through clouds in Santa Fe during a penumbral eclipse was absolutely incredible to see. My wonderful friend, Anne Calhoun, was visiting. We climbed up onto the roof and watched the sun set and the moon rise. Neither of us got great photographs.

Too much magic, maybe,

But you're not here to listen to me talk about friendship, moonrises and magic. Or maybe you are. If you know me or follow me on social media, you'll expect this sort of thing. If you clicked on a link because you found the topic interesting, you're maybe wondering when I'll get to the point.

Eventually, my new visitor!

Because this week's subject is Hot Topics & the Author's Social Media Voice, it seems the perfect time to point out that the these three things - voice, social media, and an author's response to hot topics - are inextricable. Let me unpack that a bit.

Voice

The best explanation of "voice" that I've ever heard - that is, the one that made me understand what an author's voice is - is that it stems from our beliefs.

In the writing world we spend a lot of time discussing voice. Readers recognize it, even if they can't articulate how or why. Industry folks will almost uniformly agree that it's an author's voice that keeps readers coming back for more. Authors, especially beginning ones, work to refine their personal voice. Which isn't easy, since it's not simple to explain, define or teach. Daunting for an element so critical to being a successful author.

One thing is clear - voice cannot be faked. It takes sometimes years of writing, and likely publishing, to refine that voice to its purest form. I saw paintings the other day by a 78-year-old artist. Her recent work is distinctly hers, but she completes in a few brushstrokes what she did with thousands in her youth. I saw that and thought, wow - look at how she's honed her voice. I did a post a little while back that talks about voice more. (In looking it up, I'm amused to find a photo with it of another Santa Fe landscape. See? My voice.)

It was Jayne Ann Krentz who, in a workshop, said that voice arises from our beliefs, from who we most essentially are. She's interesting because she's reinvented herself as an author several times, and has written under several names, including that one, Jayne Castle, and Amanda Quick. Each name indicates a different genre, but many of her readers (including me) read all three because we love her voice. Many love "all three authors," not realizing they're the same person.

Hot Topics

Which leads us to what we each believe in. In talking about "hot topics," I'm not referring to the clothing store (though I totally bought the Loki dress) or about the latest celebrity gossip, I'm talking about the tremendous political upheaval we've been going through all around the world, but most pointedly for me, in the U.S. with the 2016 presidential election.

The standard social media advice for authors is to stay away from politics. And I have several friends who follow it assiduously. They never post anything publicly on which way they stand. The argument is that politics shouldn't enter into what is essentially a conversation with your readers about books. I can see that. In fact, I often follow it. For the most part I'm not all that interested in debating politics anyway.

But this last election put me to the test. I kept coming back to Edmund Burke's quote: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” That's something I believe to be true.

In a typical election, I'm not going to say much. I'm not an economist, so I don't have strong opinions on the federal deficit and so forth. To a great extent, I don't think it matters greatly if the Democrats or Republicans hold the White House, because they tend to balance each other out. I take a long view on these sorts of things. I still do.

However, I do have strongly held beliefs that are impacted by what's going on. I believe that women are people first and female second, and that the key to women having personal and financial independence and equality is access to birth control and abortion. In fact, I believe all people are people first, and the rest - gender, sexual orientation, skin color, social status - all comes after that. I believe all people deserve to be treated as people, that some people don't get better perks than others, simply because of what family or set of genes they were born into.

I also believe that power and the pursuit of power corrupts.

If you've read my books, I suspect you'll know all of this about me because my beliefs come out in my work. That's my voice.

Social Media

The thing about social media is, we're trying to do two things at once: be our authentic selves and also promote our books. So, the theory that authors should stay away from controversial topics comes from the concern that offending readers could impact the perception and sales of our books.

Which, it could. It happens all the time. I do it myself. If I fundamentally disagree with an artist's beliefs and actions - Woody Allen comes to mind - I won't support them with my money. That's my vote and I get to do that. We all do.

Particularly in this day and age, social media is one of the primary avenues for authors to reach readers. However, as one smart literary agent, Jennifer Udden, says, "Social media is for promoting authors, not books."

And that brings us back to the sticking point. If social media is about the author, and the author's books are about their voice, and voice is about our beliefs - how can our social media presence NOT involve our beliefs?

It can be done, sure. As I said, I know some who can do it. One author friend of mine who steadfastly refuses to reveal her politics online commented to me, "Anyone who reads my books should be able to figure out where I stand." Some people, like her, are able to maintain a greater division between their public and private presence.

After long thought on the matter, I finally came to terms with the fact that this isn't me. I started out as a writer of personal essays and I've long had a greater degree of sharing my personal life and thoughts through my work. That's who I am. And it's important to me to be honest about who I am - which includes my beliefs - in a congruent way. That means in public or in private. I'm not willing to disguise those beliefs, which is what not ever commenting would amount to for me, particularly in favor of marketing my books.

In standing by my beliefs, I also accept that some people won't agree, and that they'll express that with their monetary vote. Perfectly legit. Ultimately it all comes down to personal choice.

It's probably something that's obvious by now, but - Personal choice is something I strongly believe in.

Politics Optional

When two unrelated factions meet, the thing that keeps everyone alive to go home at the end of the day is politics. Unless you're George R. R. Martin.

Case in point: This photo is politics in action. Two felines, both alike in dignity, on the sunny dock, where we lay our scene. (With apologies to Shakespeare) Max (the boy facing the camera) is a neighbor who desperately wants to be accepted by my cats. He is particularly taken with Hatshepsut (foreground). She, being a decade older and wiser than he, has been known to shove him in the water. True story. This moment of détente brought to you by catnip. I'd make a joke about US politics needing some weed, but frankly, I think maybe anti-psychotics are called for at this point.

So there you have it. Do I include politics in my SFF? Absolutely. I contend that it's impossible to avoid

Humans are social animals, which naturally sort themselves into hierarchies as a matter of survival - this is the stuff hardwired into the oldest parts of our brains. When we were still cheetah-snacks wandering the savannahs, the social hierarchy determined who led a group. Who ate first. Who reproduced. Who lived. Who didn't. Jockeying for position within a given social structure is part of being human.

Since Science Fiction is as a genre, one big, open ended 'what comes next?' there's really no way to avoid politics. Which isn't to say that an authors personal political views ought to intrude. They shouldn't, however, I admit that my voice, my experiences and my world view are so colored by my beliefs/thoughts/ideals that I suspect it all bleeds through. If my characters hold political convictions, I want them to belong to those characters, not to me. I'm not writing to make my characters a megaphone for my own views.

That said. I have a fondness for shining light on certain marginalized populations. As a result, many of my characters hold alternative religious views, or are other-abled, or are non-hetero. In all those cases, there are politics surrounding the issues those characters face. And because I'm usually writing romance where HEAs are the expectation, my politics DO slip into the story - I'm going for acceptance and equality. Some days, like today, after more men were killed by police (and I freely admit I will never have the full story on those incidents, but the mounting death toll of young black men in this country is unacceptable) I wonder if inserting politics into writing isn't a duty - a way of saying something, as Elie Wiesel urged - a way of sounding the alarm at enough of a remove that the message of and for compassion slips in beneath a reader's skin and takes root.

I don't know yet how to respond to something that bothers me so deeply about my society. Maybe it requires someone more skilled than I. All I know is that I grew up on the golden-eyed optimism of Star Trek. Apparently, some of that optimism rubbed off on me. Because I do think politics end up in fiction anytime there's more than one character on a page. What I don't know is where the line in the sand lies. At what point does a socially conscious scifi story turn into a morality tale? I'd prefer to stand firmly on SFF side of that equation.

Social Politics of Writing Fiction

The social politics of writing fiction extends beyond the page, beyond the rounds of edits and publishing. It's a necessity of marketing and sales. It's the joys of peer networking and consumer reach. It's navigating participation in a community without sticking your foot in a steaming pile.

Traditionally when we think of genre authors and politics, we think of the rebels we aspire to be--authors whose stories permeated the public consciousness to the point of affecting real-world change. Our passions about a certain topics or themes provoke our need to write about social injustice, climate change, agri-business, religion, war, etc. We start our stories with the state of what is then weave a tale around what could be. Cautionary or inspirational, often it's both. It doesn't matter if the story suits a publisher's business model. It matters only that we're planting a seed to make a total stranger explore a different point of view. It's long been the place of genre authors to expose government hypocrisies and to speak up as harbingers against complacency through fiction. What great company to want to keep, right?

However...

The fertile bed of social politics can turn against authors when it becomes the censor of creativity. We're currently in the throes of a resurgence in pre-print censorship. There are a lot of opinionated voices given platforms via social media and the Con circuits dictating what authors are "allowed" to write based on the characteristics of the author. Some of those voices are angry, some are well-intentioned, and some exemplify the behaviors they seek to quash. This has given rise to a tide of shaming authors for daring to write something other than "what they know...first hand." Far beyond the usual critical review that dismantles the book, this trend goes after the author for being "unqualified" to write particular aspects of fiction. It's a tragedy because too many stories that fill the narrative need aren't being submitted because of the social politics and the bullies feigning authority.

Authors, be confident in your story. Submit. Publish. Don't let social politics limit your imagination or your ambition.