Category: The Ramble (page 1 of 458)

There exists this habit, I think, online where, when we see people experiencing and then displaying an emotion that makes us uncomfortable, we feel the need to challenge it or even to correct it. Case in point, if you’re online and you express any sort of doomy feelings about the world, someone might show up to chastise you for that attitude — oh, you can’t be doomy. Doom is bad. Doom is how they win, they’ll tell you. Doom is what they want so you mustn’t feel doom! Doom gets us nothing, you fool! Don’t you see what you’ve done? YOUR DOOM IS CONTAGIOUS.

And then, the other side of the spectrum is when you express something that is in some way joyful or positive. It’s not just, “I like bagels” and someone replies, “but why do you hate donuts?” It’s like saying, “I like bagels,” and someone shows up to castigate you: “How dare you post this glib thing about bagels when our DEMOCRACY is ON FIRE, must be nice to have FANCY EXPENSIVE BAGELS YOU HUGE PIECE OF SHIT.”

I think it’s important to realize we live in a world where our emotions are not necessarily utilitarian. They’re not here to fit a function. They’re just emotions. And sometimes we display them, and for some reason, that display makes people uncomfortable when it challenges how they feel, and so they attack the emotion-haver and emotion-displayer as if that single post/skeet/image is the thing that’s going to make or break our [insert super-important thing here: democracy, climate, economy, future, existence]. We challenge it, anticipating that we can… I dunno, fix it? That by challenging someone’s doom or joy, we can somehow course correct them and by proxy course correct the rest of human history?

Thing is, it just doesn’t work like that. People individually are messy and we’re not pebbles on a train track able to derail the entire train just be existing as a pebble. Things are fucking shitty out there and it’s okay to feel like they’re impossibly, overwhelmingly shitty and it’s further okay to say how things feel impossibly, overwhelmingly shitty. You don’t need to correct someone’s feelings, because feelings aren’t facts. If they’re happy about something and expressing joy, you also don’t need to correct that joy — I mean, how messed up is that? In the midst of burgeoning chaos if someone finds delight in their new puppy or a fucking sandwich they just made, let them love the puppy, let them eat the sandwich, let them express that small pleasure in the face of overwhelming global bullshit.

Just let people have their feelings.

You can put your own feelings on your own timeline, that’s fine. If you feel like doom is bad, and you have something to counter it, put it out into the world. That’s you getting to feel how you feel, and that’s okay, too.

It’s hard not to feel doomy right now.

It’s also hard not to desperately seek small, significant things of joy.

We’re complicated weirdos, and we feel how we feel and you don’t need to change that. You just need be your own kind of complicated weirdo and put that out into the world, too. The energy is the energy. The emotion is the emotion. If there are calls to action, boost them to an audience, don’t aim them at a person unless asked for. Let people be messy. Let them have their feelings. Life is fucked up enough without feeling like you’re not allowed to feel how you feel — and worse, that you’re not allowed to say how you feel, that you damn well better cork it up inside your heart until it ruptures.

If you’re feeling sad and fucked up about the world, that’s okay. Of course you do! You have your eyes open. Things ain’t amazing! It’s normal to see BAD THINGS and then FEEL BAD as a result.

If you’re feeling desperate and are grasping for joy, yeah, of course you are. A taste of delight, of happiness, in dark and troubled times is very, very, very human. Why wouldn’t you do that? The darkness calls for a flashlight. (Or, when possible, a flamethrower — but I digress.)

Feel how you feel.

Let others feel how they feel.

(And before I get the comments: this is not a suggestion that doom is good. It’s just normal. Yes, obviously we should fight against that tide. If you’re standing in a river of sewage, try to get out of the sewage. And help others do the same. And I’m also not suggesting that in times of difficulty that’s your cue to just sub out, to give up and seek only your own happiness. I’m only saying, feelings are messy, and we all have them. Okay, bye.)

When a mysterious tower appears in the skies over England, thirteen strangers are pulled from their lives to stand before it as a countdown begins. Above the doorway is one word: ASCEND.

As they try to understand why they’ve been chosen and what the tower is, it soon becomes clear the only way out of this for everyone is… up. 

And so begins a race to the top with the group fighting to hold on to its humanity, through sinking ships, haunted houses and other waking nightmares. Can they each overcome their differences and learn to work together or does the winner take it all? What does the tower want of them and what is the price to escape?

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Red shirts are people too (and inevitable in a huge cast of characters)

Having a huge cast of characters and a tower intent on killing them meant that, inevitably, a few of them were going to become the ‘red shirts’ of my latest book. In other words, they were characters clearly destined to meet a sticky end. I didn’t plan it that way. Initially, I wanted to try and pay homage to LOST, creating a very character-centric adventure where everyone is the hero of their own story and you don’t know who’ll make it. But it soon became clear that it’s ridiculously hard to do that in book form. Across multiple seasons of TV you can generously give lots of characters their own episodes, building them up in the viewer’s estimation, before cruelly cutting them down when it’s least expected. In a book? Unless you’re going to be rotating between 13 POVs and your publisher is okay with a brick of a novel, it’s a little more challenging to give everyone their time in the sun. So eventually I had to admit defeat and learn to embrace the red shirts. And while I worked hard to try to tone down the bloody crimsonness of their attire, in the end I kind of like that they’re there. There is a tone to this story that is very 1970’s disaster movie – like The Poseidon Adventure – and leaning into the trope of having characters who are obviously destined to pop off screen early is part of the fun of the piece, I think?

Writing is a very good and very cheap form of therapy

The prologue of The Way Up Is Death was written at a time when the UK was shitting the bed in terms of common sense and decency and professionalism and lots of other things. Consequently, in a couple of scathing pages, it references the kind of political chaos that we were experiencing and would probably be an accurate representation of how we’d have handled an alien tower appearing in the skies above us. It was me venting. My way of shaking my fist at them, by immortalising their ineptitude in a fictional setting. And it felt soooo good.

I can’t imagine I’m alone in being overwhelmed by the sheer idiocy still messing with us? If you feel the same, I highly recommend spilling your bottled angst onto the page. Getting it out where you can see it, mock it, and manipulate it – however you see fit – is incredibly cathartic. You’re the one in control. And that’s not nothing in a world where we might feel perpetually helpless. The Way Up Is Death features a lot of grievances about life for that reason. Not only in the prologue, but in the characters themselves. I also hoped it might shine a spotlight on these things and go “SEE? THIS IS NUTS!” and thus offer a consoling nod to those who think they’re alone in witnessing all this and being baffled. You’re not alone. We’re all in this together and if the tower in this book teaches us anything, it’s that we need to work with each other to get through the despicable challenges ahead.

It’s fun to ponder the meaning of life

When you’re plucked from your Saturday afternoon and encouraged to climb an alien tower in the sky, it’s going to raise a few questions. Chief among them probably isn’t going to be ‘what’s life all about then?’. At least not at first. Yet as you’re thrown headlong into perilous situations, and constantly threatened with death, it may well soon cling to the forefront of your mind. The writing of this book marks one of the few times I’ve actually done research, because I did begin to wonder what life was all about for these characters, and I’m pleased to tell you that far smarter minds than mine have got an answer to that age-old question. Or, at least, they have a theory. Namely that the meaning of life is split into three stages: coherence, purpose, and significance, and that authenticity is key throughout. If you perceive increasing authenticity in your life, it’s supposed to be a sign you’re on the right track. Which felt right to me. It was a lot of fun working this philosophy into the structure of the story, and it gave me the chance to play with the characters and the authenticity they displayed to each other as things got progressively worse for them while climbing the tower. How would any of us react when faced with such unknowable horrors? Would you hold tightly to your carefully curated façade? Or would you accept who you are and embrace the flaws and differences of those around you? Ultimately, I think placing importance on authenticity is no bad way to live your life.

We would very quickly get bored of a mysterious tower hovering in the sky

It’s no spoiler to say that in this book, when an alien tower appears in the sky, hanging over the rolling green hills of middle England, society’s interest is not held for long. Only a few years ago the very idea that we’d get bored of such a thing would be ridiculous. But life in 2025 is a different beast. We are beset by so much information in text, images, videos and sound – increasingly interspersed with AI-generated bollocks – that our attention spans simply can’t cope. If a mysterious tower appeared in the sky right now, I truly believe we’d be bored of it within a week or two. We would have saturated the internet with images, made all the relevant memes, and TikTokked it into a state of normalcy. It’d just be that thing that appeared and we have to live with it and OH FFS HERE’S A BRAND NEW HORROR TO TALK ABOUT and yep we’re onto the next thing. I don’t know about you, but I kind of miss being awed by cool things in the same way that little green men captured Agent Mulder’s attention for so long.

Standalone books can be satisfying too

I love an ending to a book that leaves room for a possible ‘To be continued…’ (ideally in a rad Back to the Future font). There’s something about the knowledge we’re not done here – your favourite characters WILL return to finish the story – that leaves its hooks in you. It keeps you thinking long after the moment has passed and you can’t wait to slip back into that familiar world to explore it a little more. My first two books were deliberately set up to achieve that. The story was done, but also WAS IT? Yet with The Way Up Is Death I was thrilled to write the story knowing this was it, the tale would not continue, and we were going to say goodbye and be done with the tower at some point. I found a joy in the finality of that – to find the end of the long spool of thread I’d been pulling from my mind. I think there is a lot to be said for writing a one-and-done book and in this era of sequels and prequels and spin-offs, it’s kind of nice to have a neat little package that is what it is.

Of course, if you were to ask me for a sequel to The Way Up Is Death, then, yes, I have an idea. But it’s batshit ridiculous, so you probably shouldn’t.

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Dan Hanks is the author of Captain Moxley and the Embers of the Empire, Swashbucklers, and The Way Up Is Death, and has published articles in outlets such as Publishers Weekly. He works as a freelance editor most of the time, but being an over-qualified archaeologist he can’t help but continue to do a little part-time work in the heritage industry too (usually indoors where it’s warm and not as muddy).

Having moved around a lot in his life, Dan is currently content in the rolling green hills of the Peak District, England, where he lives with his two kids and some fluffy canine sidekicks.

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The Way Up Is Death: Bookshop.org | B&N | Waterstones (UK) | Amazon

Dan Hanks: Website | Instagram | Blue Sky

For those of you not familiar with BattleTech, it’s the long running tabletop miniatures game, RPG, and fiction series that began in 1984. Some of you might know it as a videogame, where it flies under the brand MechWarrior, which is the exact same universe and essentially the same canon. It’s set a thousand years in the future where humanity has spread across a thousand planets and combat is done in giant BattleMechs. It’s a bit dystopian and war still pretty much sucks for everyone. In the universe, rapid modes of communication have been cut off for the last thirty years or so, making it really hard to get just about anything done.

VoidBreaker deals with that specific problem, so here’s the back cover copy of the book before I dive into my lessons learned:

A NEW ERA DAWNS!

Clan Sea Fox aims to be the leading broker of interstellar communications across the Inner Sphere, but the Blackout, the continuing malfunction of the hyperpulse generator network, has stood in their way for far too long.

To fix the broken HPG network, the Sea Foxes enlist the skills of an elite Watch operative, code name Kitefin. Her first priority is to capture the one man with the knowledge to end the Blackout and restore communication between the stars: Tucker Harwell, a genius technician who vanished amid the chaos of Terra’s conquest.

Before Kitefin can take Tucker to VoidBreaker Station to begin the work of repairing the vast HPG comms network, she’ll have to find him. Unfortunately, she’s not the only one looking for him…

Every book in a series could be someone’s first:

If all of that sounds a little overwhelming to you as someone who may well have never heard of BattleTech, I wanted to make sure I could craft a book set in a universe with this much history to it that anyone could pick up and find enjoyment in. I interviewed Max Allan Collins at one point in my journalism career and he told me that his approach when writing Batman comics in the ‘80s was to make sure that every issue could be approachable by new readers as a jumping on point. “Every comic could be someone’s first” is a quote that’s bounced around a lot, often attributed to Stan Lee, but I realized it’s just as relevant in situations like BattleTech, and this was the philosophy I decided to go into with VoidBreaker. (Indeed, I try that for all of my series work.) Since I was introducing a brand new character in a faction that hasn’t seen much screen time over the course of the franchise, it would be easy to provide enough context for new readers to ease them into the universe. The thing I realized and really learned writing this book is that it can be really hard. You don’t want to talk down to the long time readers who will instantly know all of the jargon and factions at play, and you don’t want to overload the new readers with too much exposition. Finding that balance can be difficult at times, but I found the trick was to draft in the mindset of that familiar reader and then revise from the perspective of the new reader. Every time I’d get to a point where I’d say, “Why would I know about this if I don’t know anything about the world?” I could reconfigure the scene to naturally include details or imply enough context to make it work without dumping exposition all over the place and I think it makes a better reader experience for both sets of fans; the old guard and the ones coming to the universe for the first time. Having said that, you’ll have to try it out for yourself and let me know if it worked.

Challenge yourself and try something new:

Every time I set out to write a book, I try to learn something new about my craft and try something I’ve never tried before. I try to grow and learn with every bite of the proverbial apple. I think that’s something I learned early on, but I always half-forget through the process and remember why I like doing it when I get to the final product. It’s not fun to write on auto-pilot. Giving yourself a challenge is fun, it makes the writing more interesting, and more often than not makes for a better story. My friends and writing mentor, Aaron Allston once told me at our last writing retreat before he passed away, “I’m always excited to see what new mistakes you’re going to make, Bryan.”

I was a little shocked and offended at first, but he explained it to my little newbie-self that it meant I was trying new things and growing every time and I never want to lose that spirit. For this book, I wanted to stretch into story styles and genres I’d never tried before, and work with structures that were novel to me. I think it came off pretty well and I learned a thing or two about how to craft a story, I think.

Read what inspires you, but also outside your comfort zone:

Stephen King once said (yes, that Stephen King, not some other random Stephen King), “If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that. Reading is the creative center of a writer’s life.” And I take that really seriously. I read a lot, especially when I’m writing a book. This book in particular took a lot of inspiration from Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, so I was reading them as I worked to keep that fire of inspiration burning. But I was also reading a lot of stuff as I wrote outside that comfort zone of inspiration, looking to books I wouldn’t normally be reading, looking for outside perspectives and different modes of thinking. The polar opposite of what I was working on. While I was binging Ian Fleming on one hand, I was also reading things like Balzac’s Colonel Chabert and Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and contemporary stuff, too. Stuff by Hailey Piper or N.K. Jemison or Gabino Iglesias or Delilah Dawson. I even sneak in a romance novel here or there. They’re not usually my thing, but they handle character development in ways that we can all learn from. Seriously, has anyone here read Zen Cho’s Sorcerer to the Crown? It’s a stunning romance fantasy and I learned so much reading it. It’s just terrific and everyone should read it.

Imagine more.

BattleTech is set a thousand years in the future and it blends so many societies and different modes of thinking of humanity. Yes, there has been a backslide in humanity and it’s also a militaristic view of science fiction, but I had to remind myself constantly to think bigger about how things could have changed and what bold things I could do with not just technology, but the people and societies and planets. What would they honestly look like? Some of them might be better than we have now, some of them might be worse. What things would we have transcended? What things would we still struggle with. I was constantly challenging myself to imagine more and imagine better. And that’s something I think I still need to learn and work on and remind myself of. As I’m working in science fiction, I need to imagine more. I’m going to keep working on this as I continue to work in BattleTech and other sci-fi spaces. I’m going to keep working at thinking bigger and bolder. And I’m going to try to think in ways that might show us what a better future might look like in ways that might offer artistic rebellions we can learn from now.

Ignore the noise:

No piece of art is universally beloved and there will always be naysayers. And if anyone hasn’t noticed, there are folks invested in so called culture wars in order to… I don’t even know, drum up YouTube clicks and fight battles that don’t need fighting. BattleTech isn’t immune to this. They’ve been making rounds in every franchise from Star Wars and Star Trek to BattleTech and Shadowrun and anything else you can think of. They get angry if there is the slightest hint of representation or anything outside of the way things were 40 years ago.

I’ve learned it’s not my responsibility to listen to the noise or engage with it in any way.

My responsibility is to tell the best story possible and not worry about the rest of it. Kurt Vonnegut said that you need to “Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.” For me, I know who that one person is—admittedly, it’s like five people—but still. The point remains. Most of them are editors and the people I work for creatively. I want them to be happy and I want to be happy, too. I’ve had to learn to not be concerned about the reviews. Yes, I want the fans to be happy, but if the people I’m pleasing are happy, enough of the fans will be happy that I’ll be just fine.

Worrying about more than that is a good way to give myself a panic attack and I don’t need that. Nothing is really worth that.

And that’s a lesson worth taking to the bank.

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Bryan Young (he/they) works across many different media. His work as a writer and producer has been called “filmmaking gold” by The New York Times. He’s also published comic books with Slave Labor Graphics and Image Comics. He’s been a regular contributor for the Huffington Post, StarWars.com, Star Wars Insider magazine, SYFY, /Film, and was the founder and editor in chief of the geek news and review site Big Shiny Robot! In 2014, he wrote the critically acclaimed history book, A Children’s Illustrated History of Presidential Assassination. He co-authored Robotech: The Macross Saga RPG and has written five books in the BattleTech Universe: Honor’s Gauntlet, A Question of Survival, Fox Tales, Without Question, and the forthcoming VoidBreaker. His latest non-fiction tie-in book, The Big Bang Theory Book of Lists is a #1 Bestseller on Amazon. His work has won two Diamond Quill awards and in 2023 he was named Writer of the Year by the League of Utah Writers. He teaches writing for Writer’s Digest, Script Magazine, and at the University of Utah. Follow him across social media @swankmotron or visit swankmotron.com.

Bryan Young: Website

Voidbreaker: Books2Read | Signed copy direct from author

Embrace Your Personal Power with 20 Queer-Specific Rituals

Queer people go through all kinds of unique milestones and rites of passage as we grow into our true selves. Whether you are coming out, attending your first Pride parade, or changing your pronouns, this book will help you enter these rites of passage thoughtfully and spiritually.

Explore rituals for honoring chosen family, going through gender transition milestones, exploring and affirming your gender and sexuality, entering your first queer relationship, and more. Enhance your rituals with a variety of magickal allies, including deities and community ancestors (such as queer activists and leaders).

Regardless of your skill level or spiritual tradition, Queer Rites makes it simple to connect your lived experiences to your magickal practice and commemorate occasions in a way that resonates with your unique and wonderful self.

Includes a foreword by Ariana Serpentine, author of Sacred Gender, and rituals by guest writers Storm Faerywolf, Misha Magdalene, Brandon Weston, and Rev. Ron Padrón.

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It’s both satisfying and bittersweet to write the book you needed when you were younger.

As I interviewed queer people of various backgrounds and identities, it became clear how many of our landmark LGBTQ+ milestones are tainted — or worse, defined — by negative experiences. I, and many of those I spoke to, wondered how our experiences of embracing our identities would’ve been different had we celebrated them more, or at least been able to approach them more intentionally. So this book is kind of an instruction manual for how to create a sacred and empowered container for major milestones of the queer experience…and one I wish I’d had decades ago. It’s both satisfying and heartwarming to provide that experience for others, but also bittersweet knowing that I didn’t have this book when I most needed it.

No book is easy to write.

I honestly went into this one like, “Hooray, a book that’s basically an instruction manual: Easy as pie!” Um, no. As it turns out, I had to do just as much research and re-working and re-visiting and re-writing as I did with my first book, Queer Qabala. Instead of reading dusty old tomes, though, I did a lot of interviews with people whose lives and experiences were different from mine, so I could make sure the book was as inclusive as possible.

(And I also read some tomes. There was a lot less dust involved, though. There are some pretty great books on queer magick that have come out in recent years!)

A consistent soundtrack helps produce a consistent product.

While writing and editing this book, I listened to the Baldur’s Gate 3 soundtrack on a loop, and I credit that, in part, for helping me keep a consistent voice and tone throughout, and also for motivating me through the grind of writing and editing. (I even included the composer, Borislav Slavov, in the acknowledgements.) Video game music is super good at pushing you to keep going. It’s what it’s designed to do. (Though sometimes it also motivates you to play video games instead of writing. Your mileage may vary.)

Take time off the day job for every edit round (if you can).

I was lucky enough to be able to take a few days off work right before my manuscript was due to my publisher, and then again when I had to turn in the first big edit round, so that I could sit and truly focus for 8-10 hours each day and didn’t have to lose time context-switching/getting into the groove for several separate editing sessions. This made the process more efficient and it helped me keep the whole book in my head at once, so I could more easily catch things like, “Oh wait, I already said this three chapters ago” or “this contradicts something I said earlier” or “this doesn’t match the format.”

Try not to write two books simultaneously on top of a day job.

Right as I started working on this book, I got a golden opportunity to co-write another book, Sagittarius Witch, that had an aggressive deadline. I was able to put Queer Rites aside for a bit and focus on the other book, but then as soon as I turned that one in I had to shift focus back Queer Rites, and there were times when the edit rounds of both overlapped and I ended 2023 feeling super burned out. And I still wasn’t done with Queer Rites at that point! I decided to take 2024 off writing (though I still had to do a lot of editing), and now I am going into 2025 feeling like I still need more time to recover.

Bonus thing: Book launch parties don’t have to follow a standard script!

For this book’s launch, I co-produced a big queer cabaret with a friend of mine. We gathered some of the top talent in the DC/Baltimore region, hired a venue, lined up some vendors, partnered with local radical bookshop Red Emma’s to sell the books on site, found some generous sponsors, and sold 160 tickets to fill the venue. It was wildly successful — we sold over 85 copies of the book! But it was also a ludicrous amount of work for months leading up to it, and there’s no way I could’ve pulled this off without my co-producer, who had all the connections and savvy for how to pull these kinds of events together from a decade of experience. It was certainly more fun than rolling into a bookstore to talk a bit and do a signing, but it took much, much more preparation and had a lot more moving parts in the planning.

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Enfys J. Book (they/them) is an author, priestx, blogger, teacher, performer, singer, songwriter, and comedian. They wrote the Gold COVR award-winning Queer Qabala: Nonbinary, Genderfluid, Omnisexual Mysticism & Magick (Llewellyn, June 2022); co-authored (with Ivo Dominguez, Jr.) Sagittarius Witch (Llewellyn, 2024); and wrote Queer Rites: A Magickal Grimoire to Honor Your Milestones with Pride (Llewellyn, 2025).

They are also a founding member of the “funny, filthy, feminist, fandom folk” band The Misbehavin’ Maidens, the creator of a website on queer magick called majorarqueerna.com, and the host of a podcast called “4 Quick Q’s: Book Talk with Enfys,” where they interview pagan authors using questions determined by a roll of the dice. They have taught many classes on tarot, Hermetic Qabala, magickal rites of passage, and queering one’s magical practice at conferences and events around the world.

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Queer Rites (U.S.): Bookshop.org | B&N | Amazon | Buy an autographed copy

Author website: https://majorarqueerna.com/

There are five towns in the U.S. named “Normal” and seventeen-year-old Gemma Leonardo plans on visiting every one of them. Right after she escapes Children’ s Hospital in Harrisburg, where she’ s being treated for anorexia. Enter Lucas Polizzi, a high school wrestler with bulimia and, more importantly to Gemma, a getaway car. Sick of being told they’re sick, Gemma and Lucas team up for a themed road trip to “the Normals” on one condition— they can’ t mention food, ever. But as each passing mile puts their lives at greater risk, they soon realize it is their growing love and friendship, not a place on a map, that will put them on the path to recovery.

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Story inspiration comes from the strangest places

The U.S. is replete with weirdly-named towns. As someone who grew up in Nutley, New Jersey and drove past Intercourse, Pennsylvania on my way to and from college every semester, I kind of knew this. But when I began pouring over the pages of a Rand McNally Road Atlas and typing “U.S. towns with unusual names” into search engines, I discovered—in addition to the five towns named Normal—there’s Ding Dong, Texas; Booger Hole, West Virginia; Boring, Oregon; Toad Suck, Arkansas (don’t worry they also have Hope); and Santa Claus, Indiana. The latter inspired my characters to take a detour enroute to Normal, Illinois. Having them drive along Candy Cane and Jingle Bell lanes and visit the post office on Kris Kringle Circle provided excellent fodder for plot and dialogue.

Writing for a living is a lot like a road trip`

Some of my favorite stories to read, watch, and write, are road trips—Lonesome Dove, Thelma and Louise, Amy and Roger’s Epic Detour, and of course, Wanderers. My first young adult novel was about a teen girl who goes on a cross-country road trip to avoid violating a restraining order after accidentally blowing up her ex-boyfriend’s car. It was a breezy, summer romance published by Simon Pulse. The three novels that followed were also set in the summer and considered beach reads. One was published by Henry Holt Books for Young Readers, the other two by Sourcebooks. Eleven years after my debut, I tried to switch lanes, and while my latest novel is also a road trip it’s not easy, breezy, or summery. In my journey as a published author, as my writing got better, my publishers got smaller. I went from having an agent for 14 years, to selling my latest book without one. I’m not sure what point I’m at on my writing journey. Am I at a rest area on the New Jersey Turnpike? Somewhere in the middle of America? Approaching my exit? I do know that this latest book has taught me that I need to take a deep breath and enjoy the ride.

The way appears

The poet Rumi said, “As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.” To put it in Dory-speak, “Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.” Not sure if Rumi would agree, but that’s my take. Writing this book taught me perseverance. To wake up every day and do the work of a writer. Sometimes that means sitting in front of my laptop, sometimes it means taking a long walk, or people watching and eavesdropping and jotting down ideas on my phone. I’ve also started writing freelance non-fiction articles again. Until this week, I last published a book in 2018, though I’ve written three full manuscripts since then, including the one that became FINDING NORMAL.

The journey is better with a ride or die and a baby raccoon

My critique partners were with me every step of the way while drafting this novel. They are my ride or dies who hold me accountable. At the beginning of their road trip the two main characters in FINDING NORMAL, Gemma and Lucas, find an orphaned baby raccoon. To some people, raccoons are disease-carrying, kitten-killing, dumpster-diving trash pandas, but to me, with their five-fingered “hands” and black masks to prevent nighttime glare, they’re more like the ambidextrous (times two) quarterbacks of the animal world. Mama raccoons are fiercely protective of their kits (babies), who stay with them until they’re a year old, and researchers have found these adorable bandits are highly intelligent problem solvers. Whether or not they’re smarter than your average bear is up for debate, but their intelligence is on par with rhesus macaques monkeys, which leads me to the last thing I’ve learned.

Don’t make eye contact with the monkeys

This is something I didn’t necessarily learn from writing this book, but something I’ve learned from writing books in general, and from my critique partner who recently visited Bali. Upon checking into her motel, she and her partner were warned to not make eye contact with the long-tailed macaques on the property. “They see it as a sign of aggression,” she was told. Similarly, author-types who value their stomach linings and sanity should not engage with reviewers, booktokers, bookstagrammers, random Goodreads folks, and any other readers who take to social media to insult a novel that may have taken you six years to complete and feels more like your third child than a story. Take it from someone who learned early on, no good can come from engaging. Even when it’s obvious they’ve never read your book and/or published a review that got key facts (like the main character’s name) wrong. Do what I tell my dog Molly when she’s running around the house with a spent toilet paper roll in her mouth. Leave it!

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Jennifer Salvato Doktorski received a 2024 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. She is the author of five young adult novels including, FAMOUS LAST WORDS (Holt), a Bank Street College Best Children’s Book of the Year; THE SUMMER AFTER YOU & ME (Sourcebooks), a YALSA Teens’ Top Ten nominee; and FINDING NORMAL (Fitzroy Books 2025). She has published articles and essays in national magazines including Cosmopolitan and began her writing career on the obit desk of a local newspaper, where she learned the importance of deadlines and developed a lifelong love of news and coffee. She lives with her family in New Jersey and spends summers “down the shore,” where everything is always all right.

Finding Normal: Bookshop.org | B&N | Amazon | Asbury Book Coop

Jen Doktorski: Website | Instagram

It’s gonna be a stupid, horrible day. We all know that. It’s going to be full of what passes for pomp and circumstance amongst the set of rich tacky dickheads that are about to take full control of the country (they had most of the control anyway, to be fair), and then there will be a bunch of shock and awe, except I dunno how shocked we’ll be, and we definitely won’t be in awe, and many of us will want to break our Dry January streak to drink vodka from our toilets, only coming up for air long enough to shovel more ice cream into our mouths. It’s the first day of our new kakistocracy slash oligarchy, the kakistoligarchracy. It’s going to be like if William Gibson wrote Idiocracy. It’s going to be a stupid, horrible day.

But I think there are things you can do.

None of these things are revolutionary.

I don’t think today is the day for revolutionary.

I think today is the day you do the best you can do.

I think first thing you do is you donate to a charity, maybe a few charities, especially one who are going to have to do some heavy lifting in the years to come. And it’s MLK Jr. Day, too, so maybe factor that into your giving efforts. Some options could include: Southern Poverty Law Center, National Black Woman’s Justice Initiative, RAICES, ACLU, Center for Reproductive Rights, Trevor Project, Trans Lifeline, Arbor Day Foundation, Woodwell Climate Research Center, World Central Kitchen, and so forth.

Charity Navigator is a good place to find and vet charities, btw.

Giving directly to folks in need too is good, via GoFundMes — no links here because those are populous and fast-moving, but I’m sure you’ll see ’em on social media today and in the days that follow.

Reading books is wonderful. Read a book. Reading any book — from a bookstore, from the library (which to be fair are not open today), from your own shelves? Yeah. Books are good food. Doubly so if you take the time to read a book by, you know, anybody who will be hurt by today’s chaos. Author Jessica Conwell has a list over at Bluesky, for instance, of trans authors — it’s a fount of books to be bought and read, including Jessica’s own Ghost Flower. Go read some Hailey Piper, Eric LaRocca, Colson Whitehead, Charlie Jane Anders, Kosoko Jackson, V Castro, Cassandra Khaw, Cynthia Pelayo, the river of reads that awaits you is wide and it is deep. Here’s a good list of Black Authors, too. Shit, you want a great book to read today that’ll be fast and ferocious? Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark. Go find that, read it. If you’ve read it, re-read it. Memorize it.

Look away from the news if you gotta, or stare dead at it if you feel so inclined. (You gotta look eventually. Apathy will serve no one in the years ahead.) You don’t have to do it all today. You don’t have to do anything today. You can just try to be happy today, or calm, or whatever you need to be. Nobody’s asking you to spend it all and burn it up and out.

Look out for your heart and help others with theirs.

Reach out to folks. Accept others reaching out to you if you can.

Check in with your communities, with whoever comprises them.

Take a walk, if it’s not too cold where you are (and it probabably is, shit). Do a little exercise. Breathe in and breathe out. Think about something you wanna do, something good, something nice. Plan a little vacation. Write a little poem. I don’t know. Distract yourself with small pulses of love and light.

Listen. It’s gonna be a weird bad day.

It’s just the first of the weird bad days.

And if we’re being honest, it’s not even the first of them, it’s just another in a long line of weird bad days where the weird part and the bad part are spiking simultaneously, like an outbreak of a particular kind of illness. It’s not just turbulence on a flight, it’s a turbulent flight, from start to finish, snout to tail.

But we can get through it, we can land the plane.

This country is a mess, it’s always been a mess, always will be a mess, but it’s our mess. We’re with it, in it, and have often helped to make it, and that’s not defeatist, that’s not apathetic, it’s just realist to see that we’re a fucking goofy nation that has stumbled and staggered up and down some big hills and into some mucky fucking ditches. Just try to remember we need to climb the hills to see the beautiful views, you know? And first we gotta get up and out of the damn ditch. Beyond that? I think at the end of the day the people we’re with, that we surround ourselves with — that matters. It’s the people we love and care about and who care about us in return. I think it helps me to remember that it’s not like we’re some shining castle in the clouds. We’re a messy place full of messy people and I think it’s good to recognize that, and to see that we can still make motions to make it better than it is, even when it fights us like a bucking, sweat-foamed horse.

Then again, I don’t know shit about shit and might feel different tomorrow. Don’t let anyone chastise you for feeling sad or upset. Toxic optimism isn’t going get us through shit. We feel how we feel and those worries, those concerns, they’re valid. It’s okay to see that shit’s gonna be hard.

Take care of yourselves. Take care of others. Be taken care of when needed.

We’ll need your fight soon. The fight continues. The fight always continues.

Good luck. May the odds be ever in your favor.

Thanks for being here.

(As a postscript, I took that photo of the frozen flag back in 2009 — and I looked at the date, and the date was Jan 20th. Who knew.)

(Anyway, here’s a final photo I took of a squirrel doing a bump of Nature’s Cocaine. May it bring you some measure of joy.)