Identifying a story with enough backbone to survive surreal health narratives is a hard business, while relaying the fantastical next to ailment in tones reliable enough for discussions around disability to flower feels, at least, like something only the very reckless might attempt. Finding productive ways to blend the magical with health writing depends on the wisdom and stayed hand of its author. Maybe the audience, too, since mistakes will happen. Gentle criticism, or you run the risk of killing the attempt entirely. Previous experience is necessary, maybe. Writing pain necessitates a past with it, and writing around disability is also writing around honoring the body. This kind of work places parameters around the extent of enjoyment found in writing it, and the sacrificial gesture of eliminating any arbitrariness is what saves the form from deployment of heavy ableist criticism. I’ve made this mistake before, and equated the inclusive tones of magical realism with “safe harbor for my more radical thought experiments”. I didn’t think about their effect or who its intellectual influence. A stupid story, but my first attempt at doing something I’d realize later in middle age was the kind of writer I’d been: health and fantasy hold natural animosities towards one another, and it takes a certain toll on any writer who tries marrying them with the political appropriateness our culture demands. Once, in college, I attempted a 24 page story that joined Sirenomelia with a retelling of “Die kleine Meerjungfrau”. That’s fancy speak for the redhead with the yellow fish as spirit guide. It didn’t work, but it took many years of earnest, confused attempts at placing disability–mental health, specifically–in context with the wonderworlding ecosystems of Unreality.
We go to Fantasy to hide things, and in these attempts, we often come back scarred.
I’d like to introduce writer Alex Kingsley and their SSBA nominated and recent winner Empress of Dust. I, like the dunce I am, focused on their previous collection of stories instead of Empress due to several reasons I’m mostly embarrassed to admit to on public blog format. It’s a happy mistake, really, and something I feel I owe to the divine, as it reminded me too well of my own young writing and first collection from 2014. I would hazard a guess that The Strange Garden and Other Weird Tales serves as precursor for what Empress attempts to do. It’s a pleasurable composite, and endeavors to measure the dark against the impressionistic, and while the author’s imagination features heavily throughout, the stories are tightly coiled around the book’s center, which, in my mind, helps to unify the collection despite their unruliness. The stories are of swallowable lengths. I’d like to say they’re full of intent and malted charm, and speak to the natural impulses of genre marriage.
What’s it been like for you these last several months? Feel free to share your publication journey, discuss the amount of labor it took in regards to your project’s editing process, the delirious nature of third drafts, or that one late night you spent staring into a glass of wine, wondering if it’d ever truly come together.
The last several months have been a wild ride, only partially because of the novel. I ended up in a pretty bizarre situation releasing a very transgender novel just before Trans Rights in America became severely threatened. It’s hard to divorce the state of politics in the US from my writing. Whether I want it to or not, my fears always slip into my writing, so a lot more of my work has revolved around autonomy, anarchy, and the horrors of capitalism and/or the military industrial complex.
That’s not to say that I haven’t been able to find joy despite living in a dumpster fire of a country! I am a firm believer that so long as we keep fighting for our rights, it is important to continue making art and pursuing the things that make us happy. So there have been a lot of aspects of the past few months that have been absolutely thrilling — getting to do readings and signings, receiving fan mail for the first time, getting nominated for awards, etc. The novelty (pun intended) of being a published novelist has not worn off yet.
It is, however, also terrifying, because now that I am being perceived by complete strangers (and a LOT of them!) I feel very vulnerable. The first few days the book was out I did that thing that every tells you not to do, so of course I did it anyway: read the reviews. Mostly, they were good! Any that were lukewarm or critical sent me spiraling. After that object lesson, I stopped looking at reviews, and my life is definitely better for it. I’m finally getting adjusted to the feeling of having my work out there for people to judge.
Share freely any publication news you may have, and please include any links you’d like us to include.
The biggest news I have right now is that the sequel to Empress of Dust, [which is] Relic of Haven, is coming out this Fall! Space Wizard is a small press and always hosts a crowdfunding event each year, so you can support it or sign up for notifications.
https://www.spacewizardsciencefantasy.com/
In two sentences, would you summarize your novel for us?
In a future where the Earth is overrun by giant crab monsters, a scavenger lost in the desert must befriend the creatures in order to save his friends and get back home. He allies himself with Empress Kryaka and her guardian Skrack, two crabs who will get him home safely — for a price.
“…the diagnosis process is messy. If you’re like me, you’ve had to fight for years to get diagnoses in order to get the accommodations that you need. Just like I struggled to find the language for the struggles I was experiencing, my characters don’t have a clear-cut label for their own difficulties.” – AK
You’ve mentioned in correspondence that mental health is featured throughout your novel. Was this something that you came into your project knowing you wanted to discuss? If so, did you set any parameters in place for yourself around how you wanted to approach this sensitive subject?
I pretty much never know what themes I’m going to discuss when I first set out to write a book. If I begin by saying “this is a story about X theme,” it usually ends up feeling forced and contrived. Instead, I let myself write and see what bubbles up naturally. Given that I am a neurodivergent person who has dealt with a variety of mental health issues throughout my life, it is a topic that tends to crop up whether I intend it to or not.
The main parameter that I set for myself is that I want the portrayal to be honest. Usually, this means pulling from my own experience, but not always. I never want a character to be solely defined by their mental health struggle, but I do want to explore how such difficulties can have a rippling effect on someone’s entire life. The other parameter I set for myself is that I never give in-world diagnoses to characters. There are a few reasons for this.
For example, Harvard is a very anxious character. He also has a tremor, so he’s always shaky, especially when he’s nervous. A lot of people have asked me if his tremor is an anxiety disorder, a PTSD response, POTS, a neurodegenerative condition, and so on, to which I answer: I don’t know, and neither does he. That’s part of the struggle of having a disability, be it mental or physical. It’s hard to identify the source, and when you can’t identify the source, it can be very difficult to treat.
“Everyone experiences their disorders differently. If I were to say point blank, “this character has ADHD,” some people may feel represented, while others may feel it is an inaccurate portrayal. Do I have ADHD? Yeah. Does it look anything like my little sister’s ADHD? Not at all.” -AK
Her Ghosts 