I seem to keep taking on new tasks, responsibilities, and hobbies despite the fact that—last I checked—there are still only 24 hours in a day. The list is long. Like… why do I have a YouTube channel? Do I hate myself? Don’t answer that. The point is, I have been neglecting smaller pursuits like this blog, and am very late in making this announcement: I am self-publishing Hellbound! Digital copies are already available, and physical copies are on the way once I approve them. Even better: I got the most amazing cover art done! You should check out @sofiamercuri.art on Instagram. Seriously. Look at this:
It’s amazing, isn’t it?? Ahhhh! So exciting. Anyway, I published it on Barnes & Noble because I’ve been boycotting Amazon but… if I’m being honest, I’m going to have to cave and publish it on Amazon, too. I hate that. But it’s like… the more available the book is, the more chance people will buy it. And that sucks because I don’t like supporting megalomaniac billionaires. Siiiiiigh. Anyhoo… You can buy it as a Nook book OR you can buy it from Gumroad. Gumroad allows you to set your own price, which is cool. So… that’s it. Eventually I will post an update when hard copies are available. Here’s all the stuff about me:
You see what I mean? Endless list of stuff that I’m doing. I am a glutton for punishment. That’s all for now! Keep your fingers crossed that the paperback and hardcover versions of Hellbound come out looking good!
Hey. I’m back. Let’s pretend I’ve been blogging for the last three years, okay? But if you’re curious: In my farewell post on November 8th, 2018, I said I would go back to blogging if my YA novel, Hellbound, ever got published. Don’t get your hopes up. It’s not being published… by a publisher. But it is being published by me. So I figured I’d share a little bit of the process.
A couple things have happened in my life. My second child, Ari, was born last August.
He’s doing well. Warren is now four years old, but is also somehow ten feet tall. I’m teaching virtual English and reviewing podcasts on Twitter (@BexGoos). And I also have my own podcast that I do with my husband (called Not Again!). Yeah… a lot going on.
So Hellbound. I decided to self-publish after I realized that going the traditional publishing route with this book was probably never going to happen. Even though I wrote it before Lucifer, and The Good Place, and the Hellboy remake… well, that’s all people will see now. Plus, people will probably lump this in with all those fallen angel novels that were popular for a while. For this and many other reasons, I decided to self-publish. With that in mind, I set out to reread Hellbound for the first time in years. And… yikes.
This is not me being self-deprecating, okay? I am genuinely surprised that an editor wanted to get this published at one point. The story is okay, but the writing… you can tell I wrote it when I was nineteen (twenty?). It’s quite juvenile. On top of that, I realized that I unconsciously wrote the novel as a brainwashed drone of the patriarchy. There were so many problematic aspects, and I actually had the gall to consider myself a feminist at the time.
I considered the book itself to be a feminist work! So I updated it as best as I could. The first thing I had to do was pull back on the patriarchal nonsense. Then I had to modernize it because a lot has changed in ten years. I find this stuff fascinating. Maybe I’m the only one? I’m just gonna list the things that had to change to address both of the aforementioned issues. The book will be on sale later this month!
To make it more feminist…
Original: The two godlike deities that were echoes of humanity were both men. (I was like “Oo one of them is gay! Edgy!” God, twenty-year-old, me. Shut up.) Now: Tor remains male (as far as all-powerful godlike entities can have sex or gender). His sister Lux is a gay woman (Though, again, she is an all-powerful godlike being; she’s probably pretty open-minded when it comes to relationships).
Original: Almost every woman who gave birth to a Re-du-Tor died in childbirth. Tor would literally just kill women with his penis. And I never once thought, “Should women be considered disposable?” Now: It’s a fluke that Aiden’s mother died in childbirth. All the other women who gave birth to Res-du-Tor “prayed” for such an encounter, seeing it as kind of an honor. Like being visited by a deity. It’s not a perfect fix, but I had to work with what my idiot younger self gave me.
Original: I specifically noted that Aiden’s sister in her hellhound form looked “sleek and female.” Please be careful about rolling your eyes too hard. They might get stuck that way. Now: I took that piece of description out. Good Lord. I just deleted it. After I unstuck my eyes from being rolled back in my head.
Original: Tor (Aiden’s father) had created some kind of replica or clone of Aiden’s mother? It was because he loved her and couldn’t stand the idea of letting her go, but the question of her free will was one that I did not give more than a second’s thought to. Now: I made her more of a shade than a clone, and I implied she existed because of her own will mixed with Tor’s love and loneliness. I also made it clear that Tor couldn’t actually touch her or be physically intimate with her. Again, not perfect, but… I worked with what I had.
This doesn’t quite fall under the umbrella of feminism, but it still is important to admit how many subconscious biases were ingrained in me. I used to have a line that Nicolette looked like an “angel” with her “blonde hair and blue eyes.” I thought nothing of it for so long. And then one day, I reread it (this was actually years ago), and I was like… wait… Am I saying that I am pro-Aryan race? My grandfather was a Holocaust survivor for Pete’s sake! So I took that part out.
To modernize it…
I removed all mention of Facebook, though I had to keep in some form of social media site. So I just made one up called ConnectMe. ConnectMe will never become obsolete because it doesn’t exist. Fun Fact: I reused it for a different book that will likely never see the light of day.
I removed all mention of asking for directions and replaced it with using an app.
I had to change Elysia’s alarm clock (yes, a physical alarm clock) to her phone.
No one looks for the time anywhere other than their phone now, although I think they might still look at a clock if they are in a classroom.
I removed some mention of listening to the radio since a lot of cars have Bluetooth or USB hookups for phones now. I know some people still listen to the radio, but it’s rare to see that exclusively.
I had to take out a conversation about Trogdor, which broke my heart. I love Trogdor. But he is a reference the youths of today simply will not recognize.
I changed the high school students’ physical paper notebooks to electronic tablets. Most schools have gone 1-to-1 on electronic devices by now. Pens and pencils are the way of the past.
One of the main characters, Nicolette, got a part on a TV show. But streaming wasn’t a big thing at the time. Yes, Netflix and Hulu existed, but it would still be several years before people started “cutting the cord” entirely. So I updated it to her getting a part on a streaming show.
So that’s that…
Now I have to begin the arduous and cringey process of combing through the archives of this blog and unpublishing the posts that are not fit for human consumption.
Indie podcasts I’m listening to right now (the non-indie ones don’t need my help): 1. 10ish Podcast (To Ten Lists, Comedy, Fun Facts, Explicit) 2. The Green Horizon (Audio Drama, Sci-Fi, Comedy, Explicit) 3. Doomsday: History’s Most Dangerous Podcast (History’s Greatest Disasters, Graphic Content)
You know what I did immediately after I promised not to read the PTSD novel? I went ahead and read the PTSD novel. Good thing school started recently, so I haven’t had time to blog. We’ve all had a sufficient break from the depressing, unjust world, right?
Good! Let’s dive back in.
Click the image to go to the Amazon page
Book:The Impossible Knife of Memory, by Laurie Halse Anderson
Genre: Young Adult, Realistic Fiction
Recommendation: Um… honestly? Eh. It’s just… you know, it’s good. It’s okay. I much prefer Speak. You should read that one for sure.
Run-on Sentence Synopsis: Hayley is a high school student who classifies the whole world into either “zombies” or “freaks” in a way that seems like a forced quirk because it does very little to further the plot and her dad has PTSD in a bad way and she falls in love with a boy and she has to deal with her dad’s issues and her own issues.
Positive Feedback: Anderson is always successful at characterization in her own way. There were some really solid emotional moments that gripped me and made me feel the characters’ pain. As a fan of psychology, I was very interested in delving into this world of trauma and the psychological ramifications of same. The material is handled with respect and has an appropriate weight to it. It’s obviously not a lighthearted novel, and that’s good. You can tell Anderson has a vested interest in representing trauma and related mental disorders accurately.
Constructive Criticism: Given my interest in psychology, I was kind of disappointed when the father’s PTSD kind of became a subplot rather than the main story. In the end, I felt like I was reading yet another “F-the-World-Girl meets Quirky-Sexy-Boy” teen romance. Even worse, the pacing of the romance felt off to me. There wasn’t a lot of chemistry between the two characters, and they fell for each other way too quickly in my opinion. A large struggle many children go through is finding themselves parenting the parents. That should have been the meat of this story, and I just wasn’t getting that. This is weird, but I feel like Sarah Dessen would have written this book better. If you want a book that touches on tough psychological issues and abusive relationships (I mean, you wouldn’t want that, but you know what I mean), then go pick up Dreamland. Yeah… this book review just became a recommendation for another author and book. I guess that pretty much sums it up.
I still have to read Caraval, but I don’t know when I’ll do that. I have a baby, five classes to teach, and boxes to unpack. But I will try my best!
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