Spec fic writer, poet, autist
Merry Christmas, all, and happy Week 4 of our THE INFINITE Advent calendar! I’m delighted to share a cute little, maybe-canon-and-maybe-not story with you today. Think of it as autofanfiction.
(This story contains spoilers up to the first couple of chapters of THE FALLEN, but nothing later.)
(Read the full story on Substack)
I’m not going to do an award eligibility post this year, because the only new thing I published in 2022 was the poem “Google Glasses.” (A LOT of big things planned for 2023 though, so stay tuned! Sometimes writing careers are like this, just unpredictable cycles of boom and bust.)
I would very much like, though – as we move into award nomination season – to share with you some of my favorite things I read. There’s a lot of ground to cover, so we’ll do books this week, and short stories / poetry in the new year.
(Read the full post on Substack)
This week is maybe a little less light-hearted than other weeks, but I know it’s something some readers really need! I’ve finished a list of content warnings for THE INFINITE, which is now up on my official website. (I also realized that my official website… did not actually have a page for THE INFINITE yet. Whoops! That’s fixed now.)
The list of content warnings comes in two versions – a short list of topics, and a longer list explaining what happens that involves each of these topics. The longer list may, of course, have spoilers. You can choose whichever list suits your needs better.
I love these silly little quizzes, so I’ve made one to help us count down to THE INFINITE! Find out which hero from the Outside series you are, here:
https://uquiz.com/pfir1B
Possible results include Yasira, Tiv, all seven of the Seven, or Qiel Huong.
(If you’re more of a villain person, don’t worry – the villain quiz is coming in Week Five. 😀 )
For the characters of the OUTSIDE series, it’s only been a day since we left them. For us as readers, it’s been a year and a half! Here’s a quick refresher on who’s who in THE INFINITE, and what they’ve been up to most recently.
(Read the full post on Substack)
Two months to go until THE INFINITE’s launch, and I’m so excited to share the conclusion of this trilogy with all of you! And since the book comes out in January, I’ve decided to do something fun to help build hype – an ADVENT CALENDAR.
(Read the full post on Substack)
I’m continuing to (slowly) read Keith Oatley’s “Such Stuff as Dreams: The Psychology of Fiction” and I’m struck by his research into fiction and empathy. It’s so tricky to interpret research like this when, on the one hand, so much of it resonates with my gut feeling about what fiction is for; yet on the other hand, so much of it draws on the kind of junk science about empathy that dehumanizes autistic people, and the rest leaves nagging questions with me about where autistic people fit into the framework being drawn.
(Read the full post on Substack)
I’m going to uncharacteristically veer into politics this week because I’m so relieved about something that just happened here in Ontario.
(Read the full post on Substack)
This will be a little tiny bit of a “woo” post – appropriately, I suppose, for the time of year.
I’ve been writing here about my animistic conviction that my house is, in some way, alive. And about how I’ve been trying to understand how it’s feeling and what it needs from me (besides renovations, which, *stares at long and expensive to-do list*). But when I try to think about how the house feels, I usually end up focusing back on myself. I notice a feeling of my own that I’ve been projecting onto the house, and I get useful insight into myself, but not into the building.
The other day I felt something different.
(Read the full post on Substack)
Elliott Dunstan, “Home Is Where The Ghosts Are” (self-published poetry chapbook, May 2017)
[Autistic author] This brief collection is tied together, as the author’s note explains, by an experience Dunstan had in real life – moving into a new apartment and finding eerie traces at every turn of the tenant who had lived there before. From this situation he spins out an overlapping set of perspectives on ghosts, time, change, trauma, and identity. Despite the short length, it feels thoughfully reflective rather than hurried. [Recommended-2]
*
Andrew Joseph White, “Chokechain” (Medium, 2018)
[Autistic author] A trans man comes home to his transphobic parents only to discover that they’ve bought a robot designed to look and act like his idealized, pre-transition self. This is a difficult but compelling story, and its most memorable aspect to me is the way the protagonist gets to be messy and angry, seething on the inside even though his anger isn’t tolerated by those around him. There’s something very thought-provoking in how he associates anger with violence, violence with gender, gender with many of the justified reasons he’s angry; yet, despite planning violence against the new robot, he ends up finding empathy for it in an unexpected way. [Recommended-2]
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Lucas Sekiguichi, “Your Great Journey” (Daily Science Fiction, August 17, 2018)
[Autistic author] This starts out looking like one of those stories about what the afterlife is like and turns into something much weirder, as the narrator, who still physically exists and seems to be very much alive, watches everyone in their life mourn for them and move on. I am reminded of Jim Sinclair’s famous essay “Don’t Mourn For Us”; there is a lot of painful resonance here for autistic readers, queer and trans readers, and others who have been treated as dead or lost by a family or community that really just doesn’t want to face what it means for them to be alive. [Recommended-2]
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Jennifer Lee Rossman, “Gay Jaws” (self-published on Rossman’s blog, June 11, 2021)
[Autistic author] Both bloodthirsty and cute, this is a love story between a human and a hybrid human-shark who band together against the evil scientist who’s been turning people into hybrid human-sharks against their will. The whole thing is fun, but what I like best is the way the narrator calms her human-shark love interest down out of a potentially violent meltdown. She is genuinely dangerous due to her shark nature – yet the danger is contained not through force, but through explicit recognition of her humanity. [Recommended-2]
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Andi C. Buchanan, “If We Do Not Fly at Sunset” (Lightspeed, Issue 144, May 2022)
[Autistic author] A quiet, poignant story about a character descended partly from fae, perhaps a changeling, who’s just trying to navigate life and work and queer relationships in a New Zealand slowly disintegrating from climate change. The sense of helplessness and the yearning for acceptance in this story – but also the ability to find it, in small, hesitant encounters – rings very true to me. [Recommended-2]