Today in Iceland: Crushing It

In addition to doing the usual convention-y things today at IceCon, there was a pub quiz for which we broke up into teams and answered trivia questions. I’m happy to say my team crushed it, winning by a decent margin, and I was particularly proud to get the question of what was the first science fiction movie nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award (it was not Star Wars, but A Clockwork Orange). I am still basking in our collective victory.

Also, it’s past 11 and still light outside. So wild.

— JS

Hello From an Icelandic Long House

Complete with turf roof and a tour guide in the doorway who may or may not have been an actual ghost. The house only looks like it’s been around the 900s; it’s actually a recreation of a house from those days that was built in 1977. That’s still a long time ago, depending on your age. Whether 50 or 1050 years old, it was still pretty cool.

Having a fab time in Iceland, hope all is well where you are.

— JS

Visiting The Miami County Food Truck Rally

This past Saturday, I had the day off work and thought a good way to spend it would be by visiting the Miami County Food Truck Rally. Though I did go to the Darke County one last year, I had never been to the Miami County one before, so I thought I’d give it a shot.

It was unreasonably hot out, so I knew the first thing I wanted to grab was a big, refreshing lemonade.

Two big quart containers, one full of lemonade and one full of Arnold Palmer (half lemonade half iced tea).

We ended up getting a lemonade and an Arnold Palmer, and these things were huge! I think they were about five dollars each, maybe six. I was worried about not having a lid because I’m (rightfully) paranoid about bugs landing in my drink, but it ended up being fine. The lemonade was perfectly sweet and very light, you could tell it was made fresh on the spot. The Arnold Palmer was good but not nearly as sweet as the lemonade. These really got us through the courses to come.

After grabbing our beverages, I wanted to walk through and see every food truck before I made a decision. The one that ended up catching my eye the most was a Philippines cuisine truck. I was pretty surprised to see it in Miami County, since the county is almost 93% white. Also, I don’t think I’ve ever had Filipino food before, so I was definitely excited to see what they had to offer.

I ended up picking out these pork lumpia:

A small paper basket holding two lumpia (spring rolls).

Of course I didn’t realize until after we ate them that the camera focused on the container of sweet chili sauce instead of the actual food. But fear not for I have a picture of the inside!

A shot of the inside of the lumpia so you can see the pork and veggie filling.

I think these were around six dollars. The outside was crispy and I really liked the sweet chili sauce, but the flavor was a little bland. I thought the filling had a very distinct texture that was really interesting.

After our starter course we dove into some pierogis! These aren’t your everyday pierogis though, these were “General Tso’s Pierogis”:

A basket with white and red checkered paper holding a mountain of pierogis with chicken, sesame seeds, and green onion on top.

This was fifteen dollars and came with six pierogis topped with chicken, sesame seeds, green onion, and their housemade General Tso’s sauce. I did really like the pierogis, they were nice and soft and absolutely stuffed, but I was disappointed how dry the chicken was. I had expected more of their housemade sauce to be on it. Unfortunately it was pretty dang sauceless.

Moving on, we really wanted to switch our focus to some BBQ, especially since that’s what like half of the food trucks there were all about. So we really had our pick of the litter with barbecue. We ended up splitting this hot dog, because at the end of the day what beats a good ol fashioned dog?

A big ol hot dog in a bun with some sauce drizzled on top.

Also I took a bite before I remembered to take a picture so ignore the bitten off end. Anyways, I loved this hot dog, it was super yummy and simple and had the perfect drizzle of sauce.

I decided I wanted to get something to take home to eat later since I was really full in the moment but wanted to try more stuff. I ended up picking out a lobster roll that came with truffle aioli, and when I told them it was for later instead of right now, they packaged it up deconstructed-style for me so my roll wouldn’t get soggy and I could heat up the lobster individually from the aioli and roll portion. So that was nice of them! It ended up being pretty tasty. It was a good amount of lobster for the price, which was twenty-six dollars, and I quite enjoyed the truffle aioli and they did not skimp on the portion of it, especially since a little goes a long way.

We also decided to get one more beverage for the road, and got a Thai boba and a Taro boba.

Two bobas, one orange and one purple, both with matching color straws.

Each one of these was seven dollars, and both were made with almond milk. They were very very sweet, and I considered waiting to drink mine until I got home and could cut it with more milk or something, but just ended up drinking it all in the car anyways.

All in all, I had a fun time! Though, these events really need to put out more seating. There was like five picnic tables for the entire place. I hate standing and eating, that’s like the main thing that deters me from food trucks. But that’s neither here nor there, I suppose.

Do you like food truck rallies? Would you have preferred lemonade or Arnold Palmer? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!

-AMS

The Big Idea: Rob Costello

Editor Rob Costello has a theory about monsters, and what they have in common with a segment of us who constantly find themselves under attack. It’s one compelling reason for the existence of We Mostly Come Out at Night: 15 Queer Tales of Monsters, Angels & Other Creatures.

ROB COSTELLO:

If you think about it, monsters are inherently queer.

This was the first “Big Idea” behind the genesis of We Mostly Come Out at Night: 15 Queer Tales of Monsters, Angels & Other Creatures.

Despised and misunderstood, monsters are defined by their innate otherness—their innate queerness, if you like. They are creatures whose inborn nature disrupts the status quo, threatening the rules and mores of so-called “normal” life. Unable (or unwilling) to assimilate in order to assuage the fears and ignorance of those around them, they are vilified for the crime of simply existing—and, therefore, usually find themselves cast out of society, where they are treated as dangerous abominations, forced to live in the shadows or be hunted and destroyed.

Think Frankenstein’s Monster or Quasimodo.

Think Gollum or Swamp Thing.

You don’t need to squint too hard, I think, to recognize the obvious parallels between these fictional monsters and the lived experiences of millions of LGBTQIA2S+ people around the world. Queer and trans folk have long been cast (and cast out) as monsters and pariahs. In 2024, there are still dozens of countries that criminalize same-sex relationships, including a handful that impose the death penalty.

Meanwhile, despite the social progress of the past half-century, here in the United States we have recently witnessed a reactionary backlash driven by religious extremists, political opportunists, Internet trolls, and media grifters. Indeed, there is a thriving and lucrative market in the MAGAsphere for those who demonize queer and (especially) trans lives. This has led to renewed forms of legislative oppression, book and medical bans, a rise in homophobic violence, and a general air in conservative circles of unhinged hysteria reminiscent of the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and directed at everyone from doctors to librarians to drag queens.

As I describe in the Introduction to We Mostly Come Out at Night, those who correctly perceive the wider cultural embrace of queer and trans identities as a loss of their power to control and erase us have figured out how to claw back some of that power by wielding the monster metaphor as a cudgel against us, especially where children are concerned. We all know the slurs: groomers, deviants, predators, etc. They accuse us of being monsters for the stories we tell, the clothes we wear, the people we love, the pronouns we use, and even the bathrooms we enter in public places. They label us as monsters for the sheer audacity of existing when they would prefer that we disappear back into the closet.

But here’s the thing: Monsters are never powerless.

And therein lies the second, and far more meaningful “Big Idea” behind We Mostly Come Out at Night: Why not reclaim and embrace the monster metaphor as our own?

When you think about it, the very same qualities that make monsters feared and outcast are also what make them special, magical, wondrous, and strong. Their divergence from the norm—their very otherness—is their innate superpower. After all, Superman is an alien, while Spiderman and the X-Men are mutants. In a certain light, they are all monsters, too. Yet, they are perceived and portrayed as heroes.

Thus, in We Mostly Come Out at Night, my 14 amazing collaborators and I sought to reimagine the monster as a transgressive symbol of heroism and empowerment for today’s queer and trans youth. Those who, in a cynical twist of irony, face the brunt of the cruelty, violence, and oppression of the so-called “Protect the Children” crowd. So instead, we have enlisted our own army of aliens and angels, sirens and sea witches, wereboars and Wayob to protect our children, by inspiring them to live fearlessly as they are, while facing down the bigots and zealots who are so hellbent on erasing them.

But even though it’s all about monsters, We Mostly Come Out at Night is hardly a scary (or angry) read. Indeed, it was important to me from the outset that the book contain a variety of genres, styles, and tones in order to avoid becoming too polemical, dark, or depressing. Sure, there are a few delightfully creepy yarns. But there are also swoon-worthy queer and trans romances, stories of kinship and adventure, lighthearted tales of self-discovery and queer joy, profound meditations on the nature of faith and identity, and even a cozy and heartwarming haunted house story. My goal from the beginning was to ensure that every reader who picked up a copy could find at least one piece in the anthology that spoke directly to them. To that end, the book contains stories that reflect nearly every color of the rainbow flag, including gay, lesbian, bi, trans, enby, ace, and aro representation.

But most of all, what I hope readers find in We Mostly Come Out at Night is a celebration of queer and trans lives. This is a book filled with hope, resilience, and empowerment, a book that is meant to provide solace and strength to queer and trans kids everywhere who face the ugliest resurgence of right-wing hate and oppression that I’ve seen since I was their age back at the height of the AIDS epidemic.

So, if they’re going to call us monsters anyway, why not embrace that label and be the most beautiful, heroic, powerful, compassionate, strong, loving, confident, and fabulous monsters we can be? That’s why I dedicated We Mostly Come Out at Night “To all you queer little beasties out there, may you sing, shine, and slay!”

We will endure. We will overcome. We will thrive.


We Mostly Come Out at Night: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s|Allstora|Buffalo Street Books|Odyssey Bookstore

Editor’s Socials: Website|Substack|Instagram

New Cover: “Fake Plastic Trees”

Now that the novel is done, I have more time to fiddle with questionable covers of beloved songs! This one is a cover of one of Radiohead’s earlier singles, from “The Bends,” which, if I’m being honest, is probably my favorite Radiohead album. Fight me. This song gives me an opportunity to work on my falsetto, which is not generally my strong suit, but I think I acquit myself reasonably here. Enjoy.

And for those of you who somehow have missed the original in all of your days here on planet Earth, here it is:

— JS

New Novel: Finished!

What is it called? When the Moon Hits Your Eye.

How long is it? About 92,000 words.

What’s it about? It’s about the moon turning to cheese.

No, really, what’s it about? I just told you.

Seriously? Yup.

How the hell do you keep getting away with this? Honestly, it’s a mystery to me too.

What kind of cheese? You’ll have to read the book to find out.

What else should we know about the novel? That it’s a differently-shaped novel than I usually make.

What does that mean? Each chapter is a day in a lunar cycle. Some chapters feature recurring characters, some don’t. Some go off entirely on their own.

So it’s like a short story collection? Not quite. Have you ever heard of the term “fix-up novel?”

Sure, it’s when a previously published series of short stories are collected together and interstitial material is added to provide connectivity and continuity. Like Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles. Wow, you nailed that definition perfectly. Yes. It’s like that.

So you wrote a fix-up novel? No.

But — I said it’s like that. These are all new stories, none of which have been published before. It’s not a fix-up, because there was nothing to fix up.

So what the hell is it? Maybe the term I would use for it is “episodic novel.” It’s a straight-up novel for marketing purposes, because it’s novel length and people understand the term, but structurally it’s rather a bit different than than my usual novel.

Why did you do it that way? Because that’s what the book needed, and because I could.

So, you’ve written a structurally divergent novel about… cheese? Well, a moon made of cheese, but, yes.

You were dropped as a child, weren’t you? I mean, probably.

But: why cheese? Who doesn’t like cheese?

When do we get to see it? It’ll be out March 25, 2025.

Anything else you want us to know? Just that I really like it. There are bits in there that I think are some of the best writing I’ve done, and I think you will be surprised by the places this book goes.

Okay, but: Cheese? Yes. Cheese.

(Update, 5/19: updated bits to better clarify what I’m thinking about the novel’s structure.)

— JS

A Cover Song and Brief Impressions of Logic Pro 11

Apple released a new version of the Logic Pro digital audio workstation, both for Macs and the iPad, and among its updates were “session players,” basically flexible-yet-automated bass and piano player programs to go along with the flexible-yet-automated drummer program Logic Pro already had (which was also updated for this version of Logic Pro). I was curious as to how flexible they really are, so once I finished my writing for yesterday (I am soooo close to being done with the new book, y’all), I updated Logic Pro and picked a song to experiment with, in this case, “Joey” by Concrete Blonde, who are one of Krissy’s favorite bands.

I came away reasonably impressed with the new bass and piano players. For each player, Apple offers several versions of the instrument, along with a number of playing styles, and a whole lot of granularity in how the player “plays” the instrument. Are these players better than a competent bassist or pianist? Nope! Are they better than me playing a bass or keyboard? Yes! As I am generally putting music together by myself in a basement, that’s an immediate improvement for me.

Mostly. As with most things that are procedurally generated, with the bass and drum and piano lines the “session player” proved, you get what you get. You can fiddle and tweak, but that will take time and effort and at a certain point it might be simpler to just learn to play a bass or keyboard or drum set/machine. This is what I call the “Guitar Hero Problem”: All the effort learning to play a guitar-shaped game controller could have perhaps more profitably gone into learning how to play an actual guitar.

Be that as it may, I got the “session player” bass program to play down a slappy 80s bass line quickly and with less fuss than it would have taken me to plug in my own bass and slap my way sloppily around the fretboard, and the piano solo I put into the song via the piano session player is significantly more complex than I would have managed myself. I got down the instrumental part of this track in about an hour; it took rather longer to record and tweak the vocals. Yes, I know there are now “AI” programs that will sing for me if I want. I’ll pass on those right now.

One of the reasons I’ve preferred Logic Pro over some other DAWs is because of the versatility that its drummer program had offered over other similar programs; you can slot in a drum loop or program in a beat, but it’s nice to have a program that offers solid drum simulation while still having enough variability not to sound (too) robotic or repetitive. The bassist and piano “session players” offer more of the same, and the update to the newest version of Logic Pro is free if you already have it (the program for the Mac is $199 if you get it new, which is a highly competitive price for a fully-featured DAW). I do use other DAWs — Ableton and Studio One and Reason all get a workout from me — but I do tend to default to Logic Pro. It’s really solid and this new update is a very good value add.

With regard to this track, all the instrumentation is done using the “session players,” either by using their performance out of the box (in the case of the slap bass and piano solo) or by swapping out the musical instrument but retaining the generated pattern. In the particular case of this track, I decided to make the song sound extremely 80s — hyperactive 80s drums, slap-happy 80s bass, glossy 80s synth pads — in no small part because that sound was very easy to do with the “session players,” whereas going for Concrete Blonde’s grittier and more emotive rock-focused sound (see video below) would have been much, much harder. Weird! Playing actual instruments is harder! Who would have guessed. I feel pretty certain that if Concrete Blonde lead singer Johnette Napolitano ever heard this version of the song, she would drive her pickup truck to my house to kick my ass, so, you know. Don’t tell her. I hope you enjoy it anyway.

Now back to writing for me. SO CLOSE to being done!

— JS

More Than Just Mother’s Day

Grab your bouquets and boxes of chocolates and buckle up because it’s Mother’s Day! The one day out of the entire year where we celebrate our moms for always taking care of us. A day to peruse the slim pickings of pink cards at Walmart at the last minute because you didn’t get a card sooner, and grab a box of assorted chocolates even though she doesn’t like dark chocolate (maybe she’ll let you have those ones). And with a resounding “thanks for being a great mom”, we’ll continue on another year without truly appreciating them.

So I’m here today to publicly announce my gratitude! Because if that doesn’t show my love for her, what does?

I love my mom because she always folds my laundry for me. I love my mom because she always cooks me dinner. I love my mom because she always keeps our house so nice and clean. She gets all the groceries, and does all the dishes, and mows the lawn, and vacuums, and makes the appointments to have my car serviced, and gets me a glass of water whenever I ask, and takes the best care of me when I’m sick.

But, is loving someone because of all the things they do for you really loving someone? Or is it just loving that they make your life easier?

Mother’s Day makes me a little sad. I think it’s a great concept. Celebrating and appreciating mothers, awesome! The execution is not as awesome. Time after time after time, every sentiment of love seems to just be a thinly veiled “I love you because you take care of me.” Every Hallmark card emphasizes how much mothers do for us, how we “couldn’t do it without you!”, how they are a pillar and without them we would crumble. We love them because they are the backbone we build our fragile frames on, and we rely on them to keep us standing. But is that truly love?

To me, to be loved is to be known. So what I actually want to tell you all about today, is my mother. And I don’t want to tell you how good of a caretaker she is, how strong of a matriarch she is, how good she is at housekeeping.

I want to tell you that she loves Bloody Marys. I want to tell you that her favorite animal is otters. Her favorite color is yellow, and she loves sunflowers. Her favorite hot sauce is Cholula. To her, nothing beats a good brownie. She loves tomatoes so much she can just eat them straight up with a nice sprinkle of salt. She puts her tea in the microwave for exactly one minute and forty-five seconds and adds one packet of Splenda. She freezes her boxes of Thin Mints. She likes dry red wines. She loves goofy, bad movies.

For beer she almost exclusively drinks Michelob Ultra but if we go out for Mexican food she’ll order a Modelo Especial or a michelada. She loves playing cards with her friends. You would think she’s a lizard with how much she loves the sun and the heat. She loves dogs and can’t go into a shelter without crying. She’s afraid of heights but rides rollercoasters anyways. She hates truffle so much she can’t even smell it without gagging. Her favorite perfume is Tendre Poison by Christian Dior.

My mother is a strong woman, a powerhouse of efficiency and determination. But, she’s also so much more than that. She is kind, caring, and can be so goofy and weird, but that’s just what makes her her. I love her.

I am lucky and grateful to have the mom that I have, because after all, she is the best one out there.

Happy Mother’s Day, everyone. May you remember not to give your mom dark chocolate.

-AMS

Birthday Addendum: Northern Lights and Dr Who

I managed to get through 55 years of life without ever having seen an aurora with my own eyes, not for lack of interest — it’s been a “bucket list” goal of mine since I was a kid — but because of lack of opportunity: I live almost directly on the northern 40 parallel, which is pretty far south for Northern Lights (and extremely far north for Southern Lights), and before that mostly lived even further south than that, in urban environment where the night sky was usually obscured by light pollution. Going to see an aurora would take some planning.

Until last night! On my 55th birthday! When there was a solar storm intense enough to push the Northern Lights into the part of Ohio where I am. I and Krissy went out into the yard and there they were, magenta and green and slowly undulating, and perfectly amazing. I got some pictures of it, as did just about everyone who, like me, had rarely if ever seen them for themselves. I took mine with the Pixel phone’s “Night Vision” setting on, so the photos show the lights as more vibrant than they were with my own eyeballs, but even without computational enhancement, they were, genuinely, a sight to behold.

I’ll note that around here, most of the week before my birthday was cloudy and rainy, and this morning is clouds and rain as well. My birthday, however, the skies were mostly clear, which let us see the lights. This is the second time this year where Ohio’s normally cloudy spring skies cleared up for a single day to let me see a (so far) once-in-a-lifetime astronomical phenomenon, the other being the April 8 eclipse. As a friend of mine noted, I have used the “get clear skies” card with the universe twice this year and should not ask for too much after this. Which, fair. And while I know it’s coincidence that a major solar storm happened on my birthday, and that the skies cleared enough for me to see the ionized results from my yard, I’m still going to consider being able to see the Northern Lights for the first time on my birthday as a gift from the cosmos. Thanks, cosmos! It is in fact just what I wanted.

Also on my birthday, a possible name-check on the newest Dr Who episode, in which a very minor character (visible only on a viewscreen) identified themselves as “Gina Scalzi.” Now, I don’t want to read too much into this; it’s entirely possible the name was pulled out of a hat, and also, there is an actual actress named Gina Scalzi (although the character onscreen is played by Susan Twist, who, in one of the series’ small mysteries, appears to be playing more than one minor character through the season, if you include last year’s Christmas Special as part of this season). On the other hand, if ever I were to be getting a shoutout on a television show, this would be a likely one, and in the Anglosphere, “Scalzi” is not exactly a common name.

So… maybe? If I ever run into Russell Davies I’ll ask him. No matter what, it’s nice to hear my last name canonically in the Whoiverse. And, again, on my birthday! That’s even better.

— JS

55

Most of these annual photos I do indoors, but it was such a nice day I thought I would do my birthday self-portrait outside for a change. I think it was a good call, personally.

I don’t believe turning 55 conveys any special privileges other than now being eligible for living in senior housing communities, but nevertheless it’s been a reflective birthday for me. Lots of stuff is happening for me offline (in a positive way, I will note) that has me thinking about the future and how it will play out. Assuming good health and no major surprises, which is a decent-sized assumption to be sure but even so, I have a reasonably good roadmap for the next fifteen years or so, at which point I will, holy crap, 70 years old. I mean, wow. That is simultaneously far and really not all that far away.

I’m optimistic for the future but also I’m not at an age where I take things for granted anymore. I am physically and mentally healthy but every aspect of that is now something that has to be managed. I’m at the age where people who I consider my contemporaries are beginning to head to the door, and their departures, while unexpected, are no longer entirely shocking. It’s a fact of life that in your mid-fifties your crowds starts to do some thinning out. I’m not a fan of this. I would like it to happen less, thank you.

That said, I feel great and I have plans. You will find out about some of them soon, I think. In the meantime, I wish all of you a very happy me day, and hope it as fantastic for you as mine has been so far. May is a lovely time to have a birthday, I have to say. I may even go outside again!

— JS

Starter Villain a Locus Award Finalist

That’s the cover to the Italian version, incidentally.

I’m thrilled Starter Villain is a finalist for the Locus Award this year. Here are the other finalists in the Science Fiction category:

That is an extremely excellent peer group to be part of. I have no expectation of winning this year, because these works are fantastic, and also, I won last year. I fully expect to be cheering on whoever does win. That said, it doesn’t mean I’m not happy and grateful to be in their company here in 2024.

There are many more categories of finalists for the Locus Award as well, including fantasy and horror novels. The full list is here. Congratulations to everyone!

— JS

Today in Silly But Fun Purchases

I have a couple of things to celebrate this week, so I went ahead and splurged and got myself something nice, namely, an octave guitar. It’s the cream-colored guitar on the left here. As you might expect, this octave guitar is strung like a standard guitar, but is an octave higher (i.e., it plays like a standard guitar with a capo at the 12th fret).

How does it sound? Pretty good! How does it play? Also pretty nicely. If you’ve ever played a mandolin or a ukulele it’s a bit similar to those. This guitar is electric and I’ve played it through my appropriately-sized Positive Grid Spark Go mini-amp, and it sounds delightful. This is kind of a limited-use guitar, and maybe a little silly, but I like it, and it makes me happy, and as I said, I have a couple of things to celebrate this week, so why not.

I would like to say this is the last guitar I’ll get for a while, but that’s not going to be true; I bought a different one a while back (a standard-sized one) but it’s not scheduled for delivery until August. But that will be the last guitar I buy this year. I swear.

Oh, don’t look at me like that. Just trust me!

— JS

RIP Steve Albini

Pitchfork announced that Steve Albini, indie music producer and general gadfly to the music industry, has died of a heart attack at 61 years old. If you were between 13 and 33 years old in the 80s and 90s and dug what was then known as “alternative” music, then he probably had his hand in some of your favorite music from your favorite bands, including from Nirvana, PJ Harvey and the Pixies. He also fronted his own bands, one of which, Shellac, apparently has a new album coming out next week.

I knew Albini extremely tangentially, in that we both hung out on Bluesky and had some back-and-forth there. It was fun to see someone who actually had a significant role in the culture I and others of my generation participated in hanging out, shooting the shit, and making observations both on the music industry and the culture in general. Albini was known to give unvarnished opinions on the industry he worked in (his essay “The Problem With Music” is a classic piece about how the music industry mostly sucked for every band in it), and he was also remarkably self-observant about being a white dude in the culture, what that let him get away with when he was younger, and how he needed to own that past and work on where he was now. These days, that’s not nothing.

So, anyway, this really sucks and as a music lover, I’m sad about this. Also, as someone who chatted him up online a few times and enjoyed his posts otherwise, I’m also sad. As I noted on Bluesky, this is very much like hearing that your neighbor has unexpectedly passed. It’s just that in this case, the neighbor also was a fucking giant in his field. What a legacy he gets to be part of.

— JS

The Big Idea: Laura R. Samotin

For The Sins On Their Bones, author Laura R. Samotin was challenged to do several tricky things at once in order to make the whole story work. And how were these things tricky things accomplished? As today’s Big Idea explains: trickily!

LAURA R. SAMOTIN:

One of the big ideas motivating my debut adult fantasy novel The Sins On Their Bones was “how do the characters who lost the war and survived continue to live after the shooting stops?” We see many a fantasy novel where the battle is the climax, and yet I wanted to explore what it would feel like to be living in the aftermath of trauma, to be a character dealing with devastating political and personal scars. So The Sins On Our Bones starts at the end—with a Tzar in exile, having (quite spectacularly) lost a civil war to the ex-husband who deposed him. 

What I didn’t anticipate when writing was that this narrative choice posed intertwined challenges, not only for the telling of the story, but for the ability of readers to connect with deeply traumatized characters they meet at the lowest point of their lives, with the least agency and self-esteem they’ve ever had. The setup of the book is this: Dimitri Alexeyev is the former Tzar of Novo-Svitsevo, and he and the few surviving members of his court are in exile. His court is concerned—there have been rumors that his ex-husband, Alexey, is coming to finish the job and kill Dimitri and the rest of his them. And besides, it seems as though Alexey is preparing to do some rather unsavory things to the country and people they care for in the name of shoring up his rule.  

Dimitri, though, would prefer to languish in bed, chain-smoking and drinking himself to death—he is profoundly depressed and dealing with serious PTSD. There are dozens of rejections sitting in my agent’s email inbox that go something along the lines of Dimitri is too passive, he’s not an engaged character. The thing is, those rejections are right—but the implication that the only books worth publishing are the ones in which characters immediately pull themselves up and out of horrible situations by their bootstraps really frustrated me. It didn’t feel realistic to me that Dimitri would immediately spring out of bed and start drawing up plans for how to retake his country after just having suffered the biggest personal and political trauma of his life and rule. At least in my personal experience, that’s not how grappling with depression and anxiety works.

But I knew that I could make readers care about Dimitri—I just had to make them understand what he’d been through, and how miraculous it was that he was continuing to function at all. If they knew his history, they’d see the strength it took just to survive, let alone move forward, and how remarkable it was that he still allowed himself to be open and vulnerable with his friends. The complicating factor was that I couldn’t do this so easily, since I was committed to starting the book off at the point at which Dimitri had already lost—remember, that was the literal whole point of my big idea. What were all these characters doing after the shooting stopped and they found themselves on the losing side?

So on a craft level, I had to work hard to reveal the depths of Dimitri’s trauma while avoiding the one trap that every writer dreads: infodumping. I would have lost readers straight away if I began with a long recounting of everything that had happened over the course of years, because why would they care? It would be like meeting a stranger on the street and having them begin reciting their biography. Without an emotional connection to the character, there’s no reason to care about what they’ve been through—but to get readers to care about this character, I needed them to know what he’d been through. It was a very frustrating MC Escher-like scenario, especially for a debut (and still quite novice) writer. 

Working with my editor, I began to untangle the puzzle of how to do this, through conversations with other characters, flashbacks, bits of remembrances in dreams, and more. I invented a whole plot point just to give two characters a way to share their nightmares and thus reveal inner thoughts and fears and pain that they weren’t yet ready to confess out loud. I decided to feed readers a steady drip of “this is what happened” moments in order to keep them emotionally engaged, and to allow them to develop greater and greater sympathy for Dimitri.

In this sense, it’s been gratifying as an author to have already heard from so many readers that they relate to Dimitri. Many people felt as though reading the book was hard but worth it, for the reminder that even when we’re at our lowest points, we’re still worth something, and there are still people who will love and support us if we let them. But also the reminder that it’s possible to slowly regain a sense of self-worth and agency through that support (in addition to therapy, medication, etc.—all of which I have fantasy analogues for in my world). I hope that in addition to showing that books which begin at the end can be loved by readers on a craft level, that my book shows readers who relate to Dimitri a little love in return.


The Sins On Their Bones: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|The Ripped Bodice

Author’s Socials: Website|Twitter|Instagram

New Uncanny Film Essay: The Aesthetics of Spectacle: A Look at Dune in 1984 and 2024

Over at the Uncanny Magazine site, I’m continuing my essays on science fiction and fantasy film by doing a compare and contrast on how the Dune films of 1984 and the 2020s handle spectacle, and how the aesthetic choices of each are bounded by what what the concept of “spectacle” meant in each of their respective eras — and by what “it “spectacle” meant to the filmmakers, including some who are not the directors of these respective films. Come get nerdy with me about this: the essay is at this link.

— JS