Year: 2018 (page 5 of 32)

And now, a note from author Amy Jo Cousins —

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At one table sits a government lawyer. At the other table sits a child.

The child could be twelve years old. Or seventeen. Or three. She’s been given a “Know Your Rights” presentation by an attorney at the shelter where she is being detained. It may or may not have been in a language she speaks. She made her way to the United States by herself, or she was taken from a parent at the border. And now she is representing herself in immigration court in front of a judge who will determine her future.

This is our immigration system.

In every state and territory in the United States, when decisions are made regarding a child’s custody and care in the child welfare system, there are statutes that require we consider the child’s best interests, that we care about their safety and well-being.

In the immigration system? Judges are not required to consider the best interests of the child before deporting her to the country she fled. When that twelve-year-old girl represents herself in immigration court against a government attorney—whether she’s asking to be sent back to her home country or to stay in the U.S.—the judge is not required to consider where she will be safe, whether or not she will thrive, or even survive.

The immigration system is incredibly complicated and adversarial and humiliating. It turns you into a number on a case file. It doesn’t know that you’re a girl whose favorite possession is the big white bow you wear in your hair, that you’re a boy with scars under his shirt, that you make bracelets for all the kids in the shelter, that people came into your house and “disappeared” your father, that you’re going to be a soccer star when you grow up, that your house was burned down because your neighbors hate your religion, that you miss your mom and want to go home.

At the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, we provide independent Child Advocates for kids in detention. Our Child Advocates take the most complicated cases. They represent the most vulnerable children. Our job is to hear their stories, to learn about their families and home countries and individual needs, to KNOW them and to ensure everyone involved in the process is prioritizing the child’s best interests at all times. And we follow up after their release from detention to make sure they continue to have access to educational, social, medical, and legal services. A Child Advocate is a lifeline for a child in detention.

When we talk about working with the children in detention, it’s never easy or simple, because they’re not case numbers. They’re children, kids with fears and hopes and needs, and every last one of them deserves to be recognized. A Child Advocate makes sure everyone in the system knows who their child is as a real person. That’s the job. Child Advocates force decisionmakers to see children as children in a system that wants to process them like a number.

Here’s a thing I learned during my first week at the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights: it costs $3,700 to recruit and train a single Child Advocate volunteer. The Young Center takes its responsibilities seriously when it comes to background checks and training for an adult they will introduce to a child and who will advocate for that particular child for months or years.

Right now, our amazing matching challenge sponsors have offered to match up to $50,000 in donations to the Young Center. That means we could raise $100,000 this week. You know what I see when I look at $100,000? 27 new Child Advocate volunteers, each one of whom will end up working with more than one child in time. That’s DOZENS of children getting the ally they need to make sure the system sees them.

A five-year-old girl who wakes up every night in the shelter with nightmares. A six-year-old boy who has stopped speaking. A fourteen-year-old boy who was labor trafficked from China. A sixteen-year-old girl who arrived with her toddler in tow and another baby on the way.

All of these children need Child Advocates. That ally who learns their story, who sits with them in court and helps them not be scared, who makes sure everyone in the system knows what makes that kid unique. Because we should treat children like children, like they matter.

Donate to the #YCChallenge through Wednesday (11/7) and help another kiddo in detention get a Child Advocate. Your donation will be doubled by the matching challenge, plus, you’ll be entered in the lottery to win some amazing prizes, like tickets to a live filming of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, autographed copies of the Inkheart Trilogy, Star Wars memorabilia, or a personal tour of Intelligentsia’s Chicago Roasting Works.

You can do two amazing things today: vote and support the Young Center. Thank you for bringing your compassion to the fight in both arenas. Thank you.

HELLO, FRANDOS.

Hey, guess what? Tomorrow is most likely the most important election you have yet met. A great many things are at stake, and further, we have an excellent chance to provide some vital balance to countermand the current power bloc dominating policy and discourse in this country. Which means it is essential to vote blue, across the board, in every election. (Don’t believe me? Believe nearly-life-long Republican, Sully Sullenberger.) If you have not voted early or absentee, tomorrow is your day (as it is for me here in PA). It also means helping others get to the voting booths, and means asking your friends and family about them getting out to vote — sometimes that gentle nudge makes it likelier they’ll go, either as an act of social camaraderie, or, if necessary, an act of social pressure. We need to return to this country the idea that it is normal and expected to vote — part of a tradition of participating in our democracy rather than simply letting it float down the river, out of our control, like a little paper boat.

So, that’s my sales pitch.

Go vote.

It won’t automagically fix everything. But it might just turn this boat off its current course, which is presently headed right for an iceberg.

Here, listen to this weird little birb, who is yelling at you to go vote.

(It is, I believe, a Carolina Wren.)

Let’s see, onto some quick news blips.

As I noted, Zer0es is $2.99 right now on e-book. And Invasive has dropped in price, too, for e-book, to $4.99. (Note: Invasive is not a sequel to Zer0es, but is set in the same world. Mostly a new cast of characters, with a few crossing over. You do not need to read one to understand the other.)

If you require good NaNoWriMo story counsel, Damn Fine Story is your friend.

It’s nothing I had any part of, but the gorgeous special edition of D&D: Art and Arcana is like, 50% off now at Amazon.

New Ragnatalk.

I just finished page proofs for Wanderers, so that goes out soon to potential blurbers and review places — though the book doesn’t arrive until July! It’s nice though that the publisher is really pushing the book early to build some momentum.

And that’s it.

Here is a photo of an Eastern Phoebe, and then some Halloween pumpkins, and then a frozen-ass American flag, which is hopefully not a metaphor for anything.

IT’S FRIDAY so apparently that means I have more cool news to share. Which is nice! It’s nice to have things to talk about sometimes. So gird your loins, buckle your belts, and don’t forget to wash your hands with soap and water. Oh and get your damn flu shot.

Here are the quicky news bits —

• Zer0es is totally Sword and Laser’s book club book this month, so feel free to go and get in on that action — it’s got hackers and trolls and self-aware surveillance programs and body horror and other fun stuff. And if you haven’t read it yet, Harper Voyager did a wonderful thing and dropped the e-book price to $2.99 if you wanna grab it.

• Wanderers gets a shout-out at The Mary Sue, “A Unique Look At A Potential Armageddon.” I’m glad the excerpt at EW seemed to resonate with people. I’m very excited for you to read this book. As some have asked, yes, this book is in past tense, not present, and no, it’s not my first to do so — Double Dead, in fact, is in past tense. (Point of trivia: I get no royalties if you buy Double Dead and Unclean Spirits, by the way, as some have also asked that question.)

• And finally, it’s Episode 5 of Chuck & Anthony: Ragnatalk, in one of our favorite eps, this one titled: IT’S KORG O’CLOCK. Okay, the episode isn’t all about Korg — it’s also about Jeff Goldblum and Betty Crocker and Kite Man and Greg Pak and so on and so forth. GO LISTEN TO IT. Otherwise, PISS OFF, GHOST.

Don’t forget this weekend is Daylight Savings Time, where at 2AM we open the Time Jar and release the hour we’ve been keeping hostage for the last several months.

And also, come Tuesday —

Don’t forget to vote.

Your country, your democracy, and maybe the world literally counts on it.

First, you get your coffee.

You sip it. You listen to it for ideas. It has no ideas, because it’s just coffee, and coffee is idea fuel. So you drink the coffee. Or tea. Or gin, I dunno. Hell, drink some water. Just drink something. YOU NEED TO HYDRATE that is just NaNoWriMo Law right there. You let the idea ghosts enter you. And percolate. And whisper their ways.

Then —

You open a Word document, or a Scrivener page, or a plain notebook.

You regard the open expanse.

The empty white.

It is perfect as-is.

It is pure and untouched like a newborn baby. (I mean, okay, that metaphor only works if you’ve never seen a newborn baby, who look like a bag of prunes that just crawled its way out of a burlap sack full of ambrosia salad. Those things are like Toilet Ghoulies.)

You have a choice —

You can leave the page as is, open, unscathed, unmarked, a snowy expanse after a fresh winter storm.

Or you can ruin it.

You can start putting crass LANGUAGE MARKS across it: clumsy, dirty scrawl denoting the gabble-gibber of humantongue. You can write words into sentences into paragraphs. You can stomp your muddy boots all over the damn thing. You can shit it all up. What once was an innocent tract of unbroken order is now a landfill of chaos.

So, that’s your choice.

Keep it perfect and pure.

Or ruin it.

My money’s on: ruin that motherfucker.

That, I think, is the guiding principle of National Novel Writing Month: you are here not for purity, not for innocence, not for perfection. You are here to ruin a perfectly good empty page. And that isn’t just the purview of this month — but it’s writing any story, on any day.

You do this.

And then you do it again.

And then again.

And again and again and again until you have something finished. And even then that finished thing isn’t finished, because you’ve got to rip it apart once more and stitch it back together again. Repair through destruction. A near-constant act of ruination.

Now, a word on ruination:

It sounds bad.

Ruin.

A mouse turd ruins an apple pie. Cockroach eggs ruin a perfectly good ear canal. A Trump supporter ruins any party. (Sorry, it’s not Halloween anymore, sorry for the scaaaaary stooooories.)

But ruination has value, too.

Think of how ruination contributes to the act of making a beautiful balsamic vinegar, or soy sauce, or whiskey. Cooking any meal is an act of ruining the thing again and again — chopping it, skinning it, cooking it, reducing it down and breaking it apart with knife and fork and later, teeth. Communication is the act of ruining silence. Having children is the act of ruining your ability to binge watch Netflix. You gotta ruin an acorn to make an oak tree. Gotta ruin a caterpillar to make a butterfly, who in turn must one day be ruined to make more caterpillars.

The act of creation is always paired with the act of ruination.

And so, in this National Novel Writing Month, you’re gonna do exactly that. You will make a story by destroying the space of the page and your own peace. It’s easier not to do it. It’s simpler to simply let your time and your world be unperturbed by the pyroclastic act of making cool shit, but I suspect you are not the kind to go comfortably unperturbed.

Today, you’re going to ruin one page. You’re going to fill it with words. Some will be amazing words. Some will be brutally inefficient. You will string them together and when read aloud, they will make music just as often as they make the sound of a tuba kicked down a set of steps. And you’re not going to care, because that is what it takes: the willingness to do a thing poorly, the eagerness to ruin an uninterrupted space, the sheer bloody-minded delight of carving your ideas down into rock even though the only desire of the rock is to be left the hell alone.

You’ll do this day in and day out until you have a finished thing.

Maybe it fits neatly into the box marked “November.”

Maybe it takes you into December and January.

Maybe it takes you twelve months instead of one, or three weeks instead of four.

Doesn’t matter.

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

Ruination is the best friend to creation.

So get to ruining.

Your month begins now.

* * *

DAMN FINE STORY: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative

What do Luke Skywalker, John McClane, and a lonely dog on Ho’okipa Beach have in common? Simply put, we care about them.

Great storytelling is making readers care about your characters, the choices they make, and what happens to them. It’s making your audience feel the tension and emotion of a situation right alongside your protagonist. And to tell a damn fine story, you need to understand why and how that caring happens.

Whether you’re writing a novel, screenplay, video game, or comic, this funny and informative guide is chock-full of examples about the art and craft of storytelling–and how to write a damn fine story of your own.

Indiebound / Amazon / B&N

IT’S HERE IT’S HERE OMG IT’S HERE

*blows apocalyptic tuba*

*a blood rain gently falls*

Hey, if you were maybe thinking there’d be a Wanderers cover reveal before too long — well, you ain’t wrong. Because here it is, over at Entertainment Weekly. You’ll also find an excerpt from the book, and for extra fun, I’ve got some pre-order links should you be so inclined to get in on this epic journey. (Seriously, the book is like 800 pages in hardcover. It’s a bison-bludgeoner.)

Pre-order for print or e-book!

Note: the print pre-order is Indiebound, but certainly you can check with your own local indie store to nab a copy that way, and I’m sure as time gets closer I hope to visit some stores to sign books and shake babies or whatever it is us author-types do.

Here’s the cover copy —

A decadent rock star. A deeply religious radio host. A disgraced scientist. And a teenage girl who may be the world’s last hope. In the tradition of The Stand and Station Eleven comes a gripping saga that weaves an epic tapestry of humanity into an astonishing tale of survival.

Shana wakes up one morning to discover her little sister in the grip of a strange malady. She appears to be sleepwalking. She cannot talk and cannot be woken up. And she is heading with inexorable determination to a destination that only she knows. But Shana and are sister are not alone. Soon they are joined by a flock of sleepwalkers from across America, on the same mysterious journey. And like Shana, there are other “shepherds” who follow the flock to protect their friends and family on the long dark road ahead. 

For on their journey, they will discover an America convulsed with terror and violence, where this apocalyptic epidemic proves less dangerous than the fear of it. As the rest of society collapses all around them—and an ultraviolent milita threatens to exterminate them–the fate of the sleepwalkers depends on unraveling the mystery behind the epidemic. The terrifying secret will either tear the nation apart—or bring the survivors together to remake a shattered world.

And again, you can find the cover and a full excerpt at EW.

Wanderers releases July 9th, 2019, from Del Rey Books.