Not Every Character Is Physically Perfect

Do I make a conscious effort to include characters who aren't physically flawless in my novels? Yes. Dear readers, I will tell you why. Representation matters. Years ago, social media blew up with a plea from readers to include physical diversity in addition to cultural and racial diversity. I listened. So, yes, these days I make a conscious effort to include disabled characters, be their disability physical or mental. 

Do I do it well? Eh, I definitely have room to do it better. I do rely heavily on magic to skirt a lot of the day-to-day impediments and challenges. The male love interest in my Immortal Spy UF series has one arm amputated above the elbow. However, this character is a very old magical being with a keen scientific mind, so he uses magic to button his pants and lace his military boots. He applies a combo of science and magic to make his trove of prostheses that serve different functions from cooking to welding to combat, but they often melt or short-circuit when in conflict with higher magical powers. 

I have characters who suffer physical and mental consequences due to on-page conflicts who don't recover to a perfect state, but then again, I do have characters who recover to perfection. So, I'm far from a good example, but I am trying to do better. I'm not interested in tokenism but in having rich, multidimensional characters for whom any disability isn't the defining characteristic but an attribute. 

Limited editions?

So this week the subject is whether or notg we incude charcters with physical limitations in our stories.

Of course I do. Where wouod the fun be if every character was nearly perfect?

But the less glib answe goes something like this: The characters, as in real life, are deg=fined not only by what they can do, but by what they can't do. Gooing all the way back to UNDER THE OVERTREE, my very first novel, I have always believed charcters should have flaws. Any in thius case, I mean physical flaws. Mark Howell, the main player in the story (I can really call hi the hero of the tale) was obese and obsessed wigth not being o erweight. He was obsessed witgh a lot of things, really, but he couldnpt stand being overweight because he thought that held him back from the girl of his dreams.

Tyler Wilson a scrawny kid with horriboe eyesight and a dangerousoy loud mouth, saw tghe world differently and refused to let the fact that he was blind as a bat without his glasses and didnt have a battgleship body to back uo his battleship mouth stop him from firing said mouth off at the drop of a hat. they had two very different approaches to their world, as well they should.

The thing ofit is, we as people are defined not only by the world around us but by our perceptions if that world. I think you have to show that as much as possible in writing if you want to breathe life into your golems.

I ALWAYA want my golems to live as much as possible. how can i convince reader to care about the characters if they aren't able to understand their motivations I may as well as comic readers to accept stick figures (all I'm capabe of drawing these days). Theose flaws, those physical limitations can make all of the difference. In SEVEN FORGES Andover Lashk is maimed for life, His hands are utterly destroyed, and he faces a life as a cripple, assuming he survives the infection that set in on his damaged limbs. The challenges and miraculous cure he is offered shape the rest of his life from that moment on.

In the SEVEN FORGES series, it is important that one faction of the people see scars as a weakness and another sees scars as a sign or strength.

For me this us simple and effective way to show the differences in cultures. It is also a simple and effective way to show the strenhgths and weknesses of chracters who will elvolve and adapt, or fail to adapt, in a story.

Tead=ser time: Here's the back cover for a new anthology I'm editing. I'll posty more about that soon.

Cover Reveal! The Dragon's Daughter and the Winter Mage

I'm headed out of town so today I'm just sharing a cover reveal for my September release! The Dragon's Daughter and the Winter Mage comes out September 24 and isn't this cover stunning??

Preorder here!

     

Invisible Loner

Gendra—partblood daughter of an elite mossback soldier and the only shapeshifter to achieve the coveted dragon form—is anything but interesting. She’s actually plain and awkward and … invisible. Every guy she meets either looks right through her or—worse—thinks of her as just a friend. Fortunately Gen is far too practical to wallow in self pity. Much.

A Search for True Love

But as Gen accompanies her oldest friends on a quest for Her Majesty High Queen Ursula, she can’t help feeling bitter about her lonely fate as, two by two, they pair off with each other. As usual, everyone but odd-woman-out Gen seems to be finding the happiness in true love that has always eluded her. And Gen’s pathetic attempts to come out of her shell have only met with social disaster.

Dragon’s Daughter

Still, with magic rifts plaguing the Thirteen Kingdoms and a strange intelligence stalking them from an alter-realm, Gen has plenty to deal with—especially when she’s cut off from the group, isolated and facing a lethal danger. It just figures that Gen is on her own, once again. But with no one coming to save her, she has only herself to rely upon.

And, perhaps, the help of a mysterious, stranded magician… 

     

Dearest Reader...

 

This week we're talking about things we love loathe about publishing. What I love most is easy. The readers. I'm fairly new to publishing, though I've been in the writing world for a decade. Even still, readers have been such an encouragement for me. I've had people from around the world ask for signed copies of anthologies or track me down on Facebook to chat about The Witch Collector and how it changed from a novelette to a novel, or how Yeva and the Green Garden hooked them on my writing. I've watched a line form at a signing table in New York and readers smile and tell me how they couldn't wait to dig in. I just recently had a reader tell me how invested she is in the characters from Silver Heart, a novella I offer for free on my website. It gives me such joy to hear things like that. You don't have to please everyone--some people probably hate my work. But those who love it make it worth it. It makes my day to get messages from readers, and I cannot wait until the Witch Collector is out in the world. My little reader group--the Rebel Readers--are already such a wonderful support system. They're excited, and that makes ME excited. It makes me work harder.

As for things I don't like about publishing? Petty people and waiting. But these things feel minor in comparison to what I wrote above. I might be too new to answer this week's question with anything but naivety ;) But for now, I really love this gig, and I hope I get to do it for a very long time.

Writing: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

 Ah, the idealism of the new author. Everything is so shiny. All possibility lays before whatever debut book is about to hit the world. That pivotal moment is the very best part of writing. Anything could happen. Then the book is published and an author's fortunes fall as they may. This is my list of the best and worst part about the journey.

The Good

• Finishing a book. There's nothing like that feeling. Nothing. I love solving story problems to the point that I wrap a story. 
• Editing. Fixing what I've written plays to my strengths - which, in case you're wondering - are overthinking and paralysis by analysis.
• Readers. 

The Bad

• First drafts. OMG, y'all. I so want this to come easier, but see the above line about overthinking. Now you can add in second guessing and not trusting myself.
• Finding/creating the time and space I need to do the deep work I need to do in order to write. Turns out moving your parents in with you during a pandemic isn't conducive to silence and contemplation.
• Isolation. The pandemic nonsense has zapped a bunch of us who need to come together once in awhile in some kind of evil master mind convention and trade energy.
• Daily chronic migraine. SO gets in the way. We're working on it. I swear.

The Ugly

• Me. Drafting. Again. Drafting is my own Sisyphean task. WANT TO FIX. Help me fix me!
• Having someone you need to be able to trust abuse that trust by withholding vital communication. This is a thing. Remember you own your own business. Don't be afraid to fire people. Somedays it's necessary. But it's definitely bad.
• My marketing. 

Alexia's Favorite Perk to being an Author!

 Publishing is a strange, strange occupation…at least from my POV coming from the medical field. It’s time tables are opaque and responses from people lag for months until suddenly something is needed yesterday. 

It’s easy to pick out the dislikes in the book making biz, as it is with everything. But I like to focus on the good stuff—the highlights! 

My number one fave of being an author:

Being blessed to be included in some wonderful groups of authors!

This picture are my 2018 Golden Heart sisters, the Persisters. Having a group of writers that, no matter which publishing path they were taking, were starting out at about the same place was invaluable. Having these fabulous women, and the women I met through my Golden Heart experience, is definitely the best part of being an author and I hope that each and every one of you find a like-minded group to feel at home with. 

My next fave is being able to work from home and have this guy around all the time. 

Ullr the husky pup

Writing's a lonely gig! You're in your own head, you need no to minimal interruptions, quiet places rule, and all communication is done through email. It's easy to loose connections, which is maybe why authors are so fond of their pets. And I gotta say, I'm awfully fond of Ullr—even when he's a knucklehead and whining to go outside to chase squirrels. 

What are your best and worst aspects of being an author?

Writing, the best of jobs, the worst of jobs

This week on SFF Seven, we’re talking about the absolute best part of publishing… and also the worst, the nadir. The pit. The suxors.

First, the good stuff. For me, the best part of publishing is not even publishing, not really. It’s writing the book. I believe that writing is not a thing I do so much as it is a thing I am in my most core self. If I wrote nothing, I would no longer exist. That’s how integral storytelling is for me. 

Note that I’m using words like writing and storytelling here, not necessarily publishing. Where publishing shines is those occasions when I am identified as an authoress. In other words, I love validation from the outside world of a thing that I know already: that I’m a thing that writes. That validation can come in the form of an email from somebody who read a book of mine and liked it enough to tell me, or having my agent or editor express excitement over a manuscript, or even my kid telling her English teacher that she developed strong writing skills because her mom is “a professional writer.” 

Those are the moments in my life when I feel the most real, like I’m earning my spot on this planet by doing the thing I was meant to do. Publishing sometimes offers those moments, and I love it for that.

I love it less for being a business, which leads us to my least favorite thing about publishing: money. Anybody says they’re writing purely for the riches of it all gets an automatic side-eye from me. That person would be better served in almost any other profession, because fiction writing is a terrible get-rich-quick scheme. The dirty secret about this biz is that most writers don’t make a living wage through their fiction writing alone, so they supplement by giving talks, doing a little editing on the side, writing how-to books, teaching classes, or, as in my case, having a partner who doesn’t mind that I’m a net negative on the household income tax form. Yeah, I am very aware of my privilege, and I am grateful. 

To him, mind you. Not to publishing. Publishing as a biz minds very much if a writer does not rake in the bucks. Publishing is very okay with kicking that writer right to the curb. Nothing personal, just business. And that’s the thing I hate most about it.

Best & Worst of Publishing

What is the best and the worst thing about publishing?

Best: Getting to share my stories with the world!

Worst: Most of the world being unaware of the existence of those stories. 

~takes knife through the heart~

~collapses to the floor~

~single tear dribbles down cheek~