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As a kid, I didn’t know anyone else like me. My parents got divorced when I was 4, and I only saw my father for 1 week a year if he decided to drive across the country (spoiler: he stopped deciding to when I was ~11).  The only piece of him I got to hold onto (and the only piece I really wanted to) was my ancestry. Through his side of the family, I am Cajun and Indigenous. That meant everything to me. Most of my young life, I felt dramatically “unspecial”. From elementary school forward, I got picked on, bullied, and abused almost everyday. I went to a small 99.9% white school in rural Wisconsin, and being even a little different made things difficult. But despite the racial slurs and insults (among countless other affronts), I remained proud of what I was; especially being Cajun and Indigenous.

Being picked on isolates you, especially when part of what you’re being attacked for is looking different from everyone else. And don’t get me wrong, I don’t look that different. I know that innumerable others have suffered so much more than I have because of something so superficial as appearance. But I suffered nonetheless, finding myself desperately lonely though I could pretend to be happy with terrific aplomb. From within that loneliness, I took solace in fiction.

I read voraciously almost every day. I loved it all: classics, literary, sci-fi, fantasy, and comic books, too. From amidst the pages of the latter, I found something special: Forge.

I’m going to take a wild guess that most of you don’t know who I’m referring to. Birth name unknown, Forge is the preferred name of a mutant that first appeared in the mid-80s and later joined the X-Men in time for my childhood. His story has always been rather convoluted, if I’m being honest, but that didn’t matter to me as a kid. What mattered were two incredible aspects of his character that I will never forget:

1: Forge’s mutant power is a gift of invention or intuitive genius. Imagine the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, and Shuri combined; someone that can one day wake up perfectly understanding how to create time travel or infinite clean energy. In short, Forge was smart. He spoke intelligently and other characters went to him in order to get the newest equipment or create a new technology that could save the day.

2: Forge comes from the Cheyenne. In fact, an enormous part of his backstory revolves around his being trained to become a traditional healer (sometimes called “medicine man”) but taking a different path due to his mutant gifts.

Forge meant so much to me. He was NOT the most popular X-Man. Not even close, but his existence felt so incredibly special because he was Indigenous. Just like me. I had (and have) no tribal affiliation. I don’t (and can’t) connect with that side of my family. I didn’t know anyone else that felt the same as I did. But Forge was out of place, too. He never fit into the situation, and flowed through countless storylines like a ghost on the battlefield. Even better, he was smart. Part of why I got bullied so mercilessly in school was for trying hard in classes. I needed to do well, so I pushed myself. I answered questions in class and did all the homework. I was smart, just like Forge… a hero who fought with the X-Men.

As a child, you don’t know that you’re dealing with anxiety and grief and depression. You can’t understand those terms or the greater concepts to which they allude. You just feel wrong, and search for anything to make it feel even a little better.

So many children today don’t look like most of the heroes on TV or in movies or in books (comic or otherwise). They get picked on for their appearance or for being smart or for any other thing that makes them seem different, even though those differences are ultimately what makes each of us beautiful. Having a hero that mirrors ourselves back to us can make a world of difference. It bridges the gap between depression and courage, reminding us that we are not forgotten.

To myself as a child, Forge proved that being smart and Indigenous were as cool as I wished they were. His existence helped me justify my own, when I felt like nothing.

That’s why we need diverse characters. Not to “cater to liberal interests” or “comfort snowflakes,” but to remind every child that they have value and are not forgotten. That no matter who they are, they can be a hero if they want to be. I may not be a part of the X-Men like Forge, but I’m trying to be a hero by writing books that feature diverse characters.

I hope more than anything that my Iri can help even one child feel less alone. That would make all of the effort in the world worthwhile.

Thanks for reading!

If there are any characters that helped you like Forge helped me, please let me know in the comments below or on Twitter.

And if anyone was curious, my other favorite X-Man was the Cajun, Gambit.

So sorry for the massive delay on this folks! Turns out that starting a high profile technical writing gig, still finishing your newest book, looking for a new house, and then buying a new house is REALLY TIME CONSUMING.

Nonetheless, I’ll have a new proper post this week about artistry, grit, and the need for stopping without stopping (it’ll make sense once you read the post).

See you soon!

You would be relatively hard pressed, especially within the topic spaces of science fiction and fantasy, to find narratives that do NOT hinge around the actions of a villain. The Lord of the Rings has Sauron. Harry Potter and the [ALL OF THEM] have Voldemor…He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Star Wars has Darth Vader, the Emperor, Kylo Ren (sorta), and Snoke (for roughly 8.2 seconds). The Lion King has Scar. The Little Mermaid has Ursula. I could, quite literally, go on for days. We often judge a story on the quality of its villain. For example, the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s most recurring critique (at least in the circles I frequent) is its lack of good, engaging villains. And I agree with that wholeheartedly.

We remember their songs (“Be Prepared,” “Poor, Unfortunate Souls,” “The Hounds,” etc.) and sing them wickedly at one another. Surely, by every bit of evidence we can muster, villains are crucial parts of their stories. I’ve been sticking with more fantastical and whimsical narratives with my examples, but for the sake of the exercise, I’ll provide a brief list of more “realistic” villains as well:

• Nurse Ratched, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
• Anton Chigurh, No Country for Old Men
• Keyser Soze, The Usual Suspects
• Moriarty, [Take Your Pick of Sherlock Holmes Adaptations]
• Commodus, Gladiator
• Iago, Othello
• Big Brother, 1984
• and countless more.

Most writers pride themselves on the villains they’ve created. I see posts on a weekly basis with people detailing the gleevil (that’s gleeful+evil) activities of their antagonist. Many of the writing prompts that circle Writer Twitter revolve around these devilish dastards as well.

All of this goes to say, WE LOVE VILLAINS. We love having someone to hate. Someone to root against. Someone to despise.

So I wrote a novel without one.

Yes, you read that correctly. My most recently created novel, the one I’ve been describing in my recent posts about my Indigenous ancestry and diversity, has no villain at all.

Stop, for a moment, to think about what that means to you. When you read that a story has no villain, what is your immediate response?

If you’re anything like me, I would guess that you may immediately suspect that the story has no real tension or conflict. That a series of gray, murky happenings occur from beginning to end. You may even believe that the story will be unremarkable altogether. After all, what would Star Wars be with Darth Vader? What would Batman be without the Joker or any of his other panoply of evildoers? Would Harry Potter’s adventures have been anywhere near as interesting if Voldemort had never existed? If he had gone to school in the wizarding world as normal and that was that?

A story without a villain can’t be as driving or meaningful as one without; you may be thinking.

And, my dear friend, you would be wrong. The most important part of a villain–any villain–is the hero they oppose. The best villains define their heroes. In Darth Vader, we catalyze the narrative of Luke. In Voldemort, Harry. And so on. Without their villains, these characters would not exist as they are.

But what of a hero conceived without a villain at all? What if the primary conflict of the novel, beyond stunning adventures and overcoming a world of primordial spirits, came from the hero’s struggle to find herself? If a villain’s primary purpose is to challenge and define the hero throughout the story, why couldn’t we remove the villain and use the entire story to achieve the same?

Of course, doing so requires a hero capable of standing alone: bearing the entire weight of the reader’s attention unceasingly without withering into shallow 2D affectations. It takes a character who feels real.

Because what’s more real than an adventure without a villain?

I cannot speak for everyone (and wouldn’t try to), but I believe it’s safe to assume that most of us do not have a personal Sauron, Joker, or Darth Vader. Antagonists come and go through our lives, but none that persist in defining us throughout our entire existence. Instead, we define ourselves across this longer journey. We make choices, mistakes, and efforts to improve. We succeed and fail. We grow. We falter.

In the story of our lives, the greatest “villain” we ever face comes from within: our fears, insecurities, and failings. We use art to conjure faces and catchy names (“Dr. Doom,” “Sinestro,” “Venom”) for these pervasive battles. We create villains to embody our struggles. But this once…just this once, I wanted to create something fantastical that allows a character to face her fears and insecurities without attaching a brooding intellect to them. I wanted a hero who overcame herself, just like we all do as we grow into better people.

And that’s why Iri and the Spirit World is my favorite thing I’ve yet written. Because it’s strange and weird and wonderful.

Because it’s real.

The idea for this came from something simple: a piece of broken mirror on the side of the highway that nearly blinded me while driving. Pained, I exclaimed, “Ugh, it’s like the sun’s on the side of the road!” And something about the rhythm of that phrase stuck with me. As I thought more about it, I recognized an opportunity to write something less self-serious than most of the poems that I’ve been doing lately. I mean, poetry acts primarily as my outlet for thoughts and emotions about what’s happening around me in the world. I use them to process. This became something more fun, though not without its own point by the end.

I hope you enjoy!

The Sun’s on the Side of the Road

The sun’s
on the
side
of the
road.
I’m not sure
which one
of us dropped
it
but it’s there,
blazing to high heaven
off the shoulder
of I43.
In my day,
stars
stayed up in the sky,
but now,
folks’re finding’em
in every culvert
and parking lane
from here
to Black Earth.
Still, thos’re just stars;
this is the sun
on the side of the road.
It’s not every day
you see a piece of the heavens
on Earth.
Probably every third day
at most,
so this is mighty special.
Y’know, some say
that all these stars crashing
down
means something’s gone real wrong;
that we broke the sky
and soon
the night won’t be aught but darkness
split
wide
like a mouth looking to swallow.
But I think it’s fine.
Who’s to say
this ain’t how it’s meant to be
with stars falling
and the sun on
the side of
the road?
I took a picture as I drove by.
Turned out nice.

As I believe I have mentioned in the past, much of my writing time has been focused on finishing prep on my newest novel (RUNNER) as I will be querying it within the next few days.

Nonetheless, I’ve found an itch to do something that I haven’t done in quite some time (i.e. years): write poetry.

For a very, very long time, poetry was the only kind of creative writing to which I subscribed. I have spent years studying it and even used my college senior honors project in English to write an Ars Poetica. By the time I largely stopped writing poetry (a few months before I took up novel writing), I’d already created several books’ worth of poems divided by topics and inspiration, etc. I don’t say that to brag; my point is that poetry came more naturally to me than any other kind of writing, so it’s rather remarkable that I stopped for as long as I did. And probably equally remarkable that I’ve come back to it.

Frankly, my thoughts on poetry have changed, and while I largely wrote in my earlier youth with the goal of putting together and publishing books of poetry, I’ve now taken to writing down poems as an expression of my thoughts. The last two years have involved some incredibly difficult and stupendously wonderful changes in my life, which means that sometimes my head gets so full of words that I need to export some of them to paper such that I can better understand where I am and where I’m going.

Today, I’d like to share one such poem. Not because I think it’s great or terrific or what have you but because I think it provides a window into me. After giving it a read, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments or over on Twitter (@Dreamertide). The smaller hope is that it offers you some insight into me; my greater hope is that it sparks a conversation with you about yourself.

—

Tapestry (Or How I Came This Far)

Every loose thread–
the frizzy tangle
by which I recognized my life–
has come together
as one;
a knot bigger than me,
that seeks, in its vastness,
to consume.
What a stupid and superb question is
“Who am I?”
For so long, I couldn’t claim to know.
I could lie, yes.
I could weave a fine tale from each of those threads,
pulled together by an imagination
that has always sought to make the best
of little or nothing.
But even now that I know
who I am,
I still feel the gravity of each quantum string:
dangling from the core of myself,
begging to be re-analyzed
re-thought
re-examined.
I still feel the fear that I will unbecome–
the sweeping narrative
cut
short
by the subsummation of my soul
into gnashing madness.
It frightens me,
terrifies me,
and yet is powerless.
The Lord God once said,
“I Am Who I Am,”
and while I am certainly not
God
or anything approaching him,
I can’t help but find solace in those words.
I, too, am who I am.
No one person or force made me this way.
I am an amalgam of all that has come before this moment;
a gestalt
of memories, feelings, and thoughts.
I used to think I was a ghost,
barely seen, wrongly remembered,
but now I see that I’ve never been more alive.
The world scares me,
but I’ve used these loose threads
as an anchor.
I am imperfectly perfect.
I am afraid.
I am happy.
I am sad.
I am loved.
I am confused
encouraged
remembered
forgotten
more
more
more.
God once said, “Let there be light.”
I am.

Hello, friends! It has been a while since my last post…

BUT THAT’S BECAUSE I FINISHED ANOTHER BOOK!

Truth be told, I had the option of setting aside blog posts for a time to focus on finishing RUNNER or keep doing what I was doing, pushing completion further out. Ultimately, we all know what I chose.

As I’m still happily at work on the query process for that novel and the preceding CONDUIT, I won’t be posting as often as I once did. Spotify saw fit to inspire me, however, so today I’ve put together something entertaining.

MY TOP 10 WRITING SONGS OF 2017

1: Lotus Land – Philter

I’ve already written about how this is my favorite writing song of all time. I’ve listened to it hundreds of times, and plan to hundreds more. Just listen to it. Seriously. Please.

IT’S SO GOOD.

2. Monolith – pg.lost

Gritty. Brooding. Intense.

This track, well described by any (or all) of those adjectives, got nearly all of its plays when I was in the midst of writing tense scenes. Arguments? Rising passion (fighting, not loving)? Violence? “Monolith” is one of my oldest tracks for that.

3. Watchtower – Michael McCann

Oh, “Watchtower.”  By the time I finish each book, there’s a song that aligns with it in my mind. Generally, it’s the song I’ve listened to the most while writing it. CONDUIT was “Lotus Land,” for example. RUNNER is this track. The grim intensity bleeds into soaring melody, lifting the bleak into the optimistic. More than any other track, “Watchtower” captures the spirit of my newest novel. I could not be happier.

4. Song for Bob – Nick Cave, Andrew Ellis

Here’s another one I’ve already written loads about, so I won’t write loads more. For poignant, sad, quiet instances, this track stands out. It tells its own story as you listen…

And no, I haven’t seen the movie this is from.

5. Blindscape Theme – Gavin Brown

I’ll openly admit that I did not expect this song to be in my Top 10 for the year. But as I listened to it again, I remember the long drafting sessions for CONDUIT earlier in the year that were driven by this beat.

A song best used, in my opinion, when drafting long journeys, definitely check it out.

6. Old Story – Jizue

I love this song so much. It’s one of my favorite tracks in general, from an altogether INCREDIBLE album (aptly named Story).

If you haven’t checked this group out, please do. They are superb. You can find my raving about them in other music posts on this blog or on Twitter.

7. Believe in the Kingdom – King Arthur

Here’s another one I’ve spoken about a lot in the past. Beautiful. Thoughtful. Inspiring. Give this track a shot if you want music to mirror the deep thinking of a protagonist, or the soul-searching of an antihero.

Trust me.

8. Final Blast – Zabutom

Seemingly out of place in this list, “Final Blast” is chiptune: a type of music I often enjoy, but rarely while writing. That said, the upbeat excitement this song brings to life whenever I put it on have helped me through some challenging bits of writer’s block. Not to mention plain old fatigue.

9. Stuck in Dreams – Nightcall

If you couldn’t tell from the header, my Twitter handle, or the name of my second novel: I like dreams. This song really reflects that second novel to me, though I didn’t find it until well after I’d completed that work. Nonetheless, the fusion of piano with electronic instrumentation creates a song that inspires creativity as effectively as driving you forward in the process.

10. Robeast – Dance With the Dead

This song is fun. Period. End-stop. Put it on and rock out to it. Air drum to it. Dance (With the Dead) to it.

Or write to it. That would be good, too.

Conclusion

That’s all for today, friends, but know that you can always catch me on Twitter making observations, cracking puns, and trying to support my fellow writers. Feel free to throw me a follow and let me know what your top writing songs are for 2017!

See you soon:

Hello friends! As I discussed on Monday, I wanted to take a little time to share the episode list for each week’s Hall-Who-ween showing. For more info on what I’m talking about, you can find a full write-up HERE!

For each episode shown, I’ll provide a little insight into why I picked it and why  ordered the episodes as I did.

Let’s go!

First Episode: Silence in the Library (Doctor Who Season 4, Episode 8)

For as long as we’ve been doing Hall-Who-ween, it’s started with this episode. A classic “monster of the week” story with a fantastic twist named River Song, this episode featues David Tennant late in his career as the Doctor. The episode’s creature–the Vashta Nerada–ticks all the boxes: creepy, built out of a normal thing we’re used to, and in possession of a killer (literally) catchphrase:

“Hey! Who turned out the lights?”

By all of these factors combined, it just starts Hall-Who-ween off on the right note, every time.

Second Episode: David S Pumpkins (Saturday Night Live)

Okay, this isn’t a full episode, but by the request of one attendee, I added it into the mix. Doing a full, intense, 1.5 hour anything during a showing event like this can really get people sleepy or bored. By rolling into something like this–changing up the tone and style of the shows being watched–you keep the audience fully engaged.

Also, this short is hilarious:

Third Episode: Epidemiology (Community Season 2, Episode 6)

In my opinion, this is one of the greatest Halloween episodes of all time. From the seamless integration (and inversion) of classic horror movie tropes to the pitch-perfect banter between characters, this episode is Community at its best. Sticking to comedic outings from here throughout the rest of the evening really kicks off Hall-Who-ween on a positive note that can convince people to come back…when you will surprise them with the reaaaaallly intense episodes.

MUAHAHAHA!

Third Episode: Greg Pikitis (Parks and Recreation Season 2, Episode 7)

A classic sitcom Halloween episode that graces almost every “best of” list you could read (trust me, I’ve read most of them). Not a ton to say here except that the pacing of this episode is top notch. It celebrates the weird and awkward of Halloween as effectively as the foibles of its characters without getting too bogged down in overarching plot points that won’t be touched again during the Hall-Who-ween event. That’s why, for example, the later Parks episode “Meet N’ Greet” isn’t a Hall-Who-ween feature.

Fourth Episode: Halloween (Brooklyn Nine-Nine Season 1, Episode 6)

Plucky main character tries to outsmart his genius boss. It’s a classic trope, and rarely if ever executed as well as here. Given that the whole episode also lambastes the many poor choices lots of folk make on Halloween. As this is the first part of what has become an annual episode tradition in Brooklyn Nine-Nine, showing the first episode here ensures that later parts can be aired during later showings.

Make sure you remember your ‘stume on the day, just saying.

Conclusion

Ultimately, your Hall-Who-ween can be whatever you want it to be. I just hope that by sharing the first showing’s episodes for this year, you get some good ideas to get you started.

Best of luck with your celebrations, and see you next week for more Star Trek and Hall-Who-ween goodness!

For more content, check out the main page HERE.