Lisa A. Nichols's Blog

Author biographies are intended to be short, pithy things that try to convince you that I’d be fun to hang out with for the hours you’ll spend reading the book. At least, that’s my take. But of course, there’s much more to me than that.

In my regular Patreon updates, in addition to updates about my work (and exclusive peeks behind the scenes!) you’ll hear me talking about my real life, which is often messy and fraught. Writing fiction has always been my refuge in addition to a job. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t going to be a list of grievances and constant complaints.

Here’s where I am, and what I’ll probably be talking about:

Writing: I mean, obviously. I love talking about process and giving writing pointers, so those will be available to patrons at certain tiers and above. But all tiers will receive updates and commentary on what I’m working on.
Fandom and Pop Culture: I am a hardcore geek and have been my entire life. I mean, my official author bio name-drops Luke Skywalker, love of my life, so there you go. I’ve also been an active participant in several fandoms through the years. (You might, MAYBE, even get access to my fanfic, if I’m feeling brave.

Come join me at Nicola’s Books on Jackson Ave. in Ann Arbor on May 21 at 7pm for a book launch event. You can RSVP on Facebook here.

I’m not going to tell you every time there’s a review for Vessel, but there have been a few really exciting things I wanted to share with you.

First, Vessel received a starred rating in Library Journal, who also named it their Debut of the Month. They had some amazing things to say! “Sf aficionados will savor this surprising page-turner. The attempt to resolve the personal relationship problems inherent after long separations from friends, spouse, and child is compelling. Highly recommended.”

Then just this week I found out that LoanStars, a site that compiles lists of the top ten books each month chosen by library staff all over Canada, has named Vessel for the month of May!

There are so many great things coming that I can’t wait to share with you. Watch this space!

Surfing through Netflix is a time-honored tradition. I mean, who among us hasn’t spent the time we planned to spend watching something just scrolling through trying to decide what to watch? I’ve taken up knitting again and have been watching and rewatching things while I knit. Something has become clear to me: I find that I am less and less interested in watching white-centered stories, particularly white Americans. Don’t get me wrong! I still love Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, even though they remain white-centered despite some notable improvements. But I’m finding that for new franchises and series, it’s a lot harder for a less diverse cast to grab my attention.

In my latest round of binge-watching, I watched season two of Luke Cage, and the first season of Netflix’s One Day at a Time. And somewhere in there I rewatched Black Panther because that’s rapidly becoming one of my favorite movies ever. It hasn’t quite knocked Captain America: The Winter Soldier from the top of my MCU favorites, but it’s a tie. (I am a Sam Wilson stan for life. And a Bucky stan. And a Sam-and-Bucky stan, ifyouknowwhatImean, god bless AO3.)

Bear with me here, because I’m going to make this about my experience with representation for a minute. I am a white, fat, queer middle-aged woman with a mental illness. The closest I have ever come to seeing a representation of myself in anything was the mom in Who’s Eating Gilbert Grape, and I am still seething about that (granted, I’m pretty sure she wasn’t queer). Bad representations of mental illness drive me up the wall. Bad representations of bisexual women, aaagh! Bad representations of fat people… also drive me up the wall, but sadly, I’ve come to expect them and it doesn’t look like they’re going anywhere anytime soon.  

Even good representations of women in general in my favorite genres have historically been pretty rare. Yes, Leia is awesome and Carrie Fisher will always be a role model for me. But Leia was strong to the point that Lucas felt the need to objectify the hell out of her in that damned gold bikini, and I will never forgive him for that. (And do not get me started on what he did to Padme.) Yes, Ripley from Alien. I know. Ripley was amazing. But Cameron also felt compelled to strip her down to her underwear at the end of the movie.

The first time I remember having that moment of OH. THAT’S HOW THAT FEELS was when Rey ignited Luke’s lightsaber in The Force Awakens. I had literally waited my entire life to see a woman be the central hero in a Star Wars story—without winding up in her underwear. (Do not screw this up in the third movie, JJ.)

The next time was the No Man’s Land scene in Wonder Woman, where I literally burst into tears watching it. I turned to my friend and asked, “Is this how guys feel seeing superhero movies?” See… I knew, intellectually, that good representation mattered, but those were the first times I felt it viscerally.

But in all the above cases, while the representation might not have been great about me specifically, the culture I grew up in, the prevailing whiteness, has dominated entertainment for pretty much forever.

Anyway. I didn’t sit down and say “All right, let’s watch some stories about people of color!” I’d just been meaning to catch up on Luke Cage forever, and had been meaning to watch ODAAT forever too. And I had the same realization that I had when I watched the first season of Luke Cage, and the first time I saw Black Panther:

This story was not created for me.

And you know, that’s an unusual feeling for a white person. But in my case, it was a good feeling. Being able to watch those stories feels like being invited into someone’s home for dinner: it’s not mine, and it would be rude and out of line for me to start demanding that they justify their decorating choices or what they’re serving. I’m just there to hang out, have a good time, and get to know people. That’s a problem that I’ve seen with how many white critics approach diverse media by diverse creators. They try to judge everything by their own frame of reference. If something doesn’t make sense to them immediately, they see it as a flaw, rather than trying to understand where the creator was coming from. There’s a sense of entitlement that says if something doesn’t fit into their cultural framework, then it’s no good.

I don’t understand this mentality. Why wouldn’t you want to see/read stories about people who are not like you? I mean, the whole reason a lot of people read fantasy and science fiction is to see into worlds and cultures that aren’t theirs. Meanwhile there are cultures right here on Earth that they ignore. I suppose maybe in the case of white men, they’re so accustomed to seeing themselves reflected that seeing another image is threatening. For me, one of my favorite things is knowing that there are things I am missing because I lack the cultural context. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like I can feel the depth of meaning that’s there, and I love that it’s there for someone else to appreciate.

Of everything I’ve been watching, I’ve connected most with One Day at a Time. I literally cannot say enough about how wonderful this show is. Every episode, I’m guaranteed to both laugh out loud and get sniffly. (Or flat out sob. The season one finale broke me. I ugly-cried for ten minutes—but in a good way!) One of the reasons I’ve connected with it so hard is that it offers solid representation across multiple fronts. Penelope, a single mom, is a former soldier with PTSD—and let me tell you, season two has one of the most accurate depictions of a depressive episode that I have ever seen on television. I felt absolutely seen. And Elena, the oldest daughter, is a smart teenager who wears glasses and struggles to fit in at school and with the realization that she’s gay. My life was nothing like hers, but seeing her is almost like seeing a version of me that received plenty of love and support to be myself. It’s incredibly cathartic.

And of course, ODAAT has everyone’s favorite apartment sitcom trope, “the bumbling building super of a different background than the main characters”—white trust fund hipster Schneider. I absolutely love how the show treats him. Here, white people are the “other,” and the show pulls no punches about that. Schneider is clueless about racial and economic issues, completely unaware of his own privilege, and as a result says some really dumb, sometimes insensitive and/or racist, crap. But when he gets called on it—or occasionally listens to the words that just came out of his mouth and realizes he screwed up—he’s willing to learn and work to do better.  Schneider holds up a mirror to the white audience, asking them to consider if they’ve said some of that same dumb shit, and asking them to be better. While, of course, making you laugh your head off. Which is a damned good trick.

Good representation is slowly getting easier to find (too slowly). And of course, I can’t point to things and go “this is good representation, this is bad representation” if a story depicts something I am not. And I know that even solid representation can have flaws. But by listening to others, it’s easy to see what rises to the top. The sense of absolute joy that surrounded the release of Black Panther was so exciting to see, and made me want to see it even more. Hearing Latinx praise One Day at a Time also caught my attention. Basically, if someone is telling a story about people like you, and you’re excited and happy about it? Then I wanna see it. I want to come sit in your dining room with you and learn more about who you are.

It seems like writing and music go hand in hand for a lot of people, me included. Some people can’t write to songs with lyrics, others don’t mind. I generally can, unless I’m reeeeally unfocused that day (go team ADHD) or if I’m writing by hand. For some reason, if I’m writing by hand, I end up writing the lyrics by accident.

I’m old enough that I remember the glory days of the mixtape, the joys and frustrations of making one–running out of room on the tape! trying to catch the right song off the radio!–and the delight in receiving one, especially if you spent the whole time listening to it wondering if the creator was trying to send you some sort of message with the lyrics. The days of mix CDs seem really short to me now, before along came MP3s and playlists. I love playlists. I love that I can pretty much find any song I want to hear, legally even!

One of the best ways to procrastinate when starting a new writing project is to come up with a playlist for it! It may seem like waxing the cat (which is the most useful writing-related term ever), but I’ve found for me, it actually does help me focus to pull up the book’s playlist. And one of my go-tos for some scenes is to pull up a single song and put it on repeat in my headphones–and it seems like I’m not alone in this.Usually if I’m doing this, though, it’s something from a movie score. The score for Captain America: The Winter Soldier has been a favorite lately.

Creating the right playlist is an artform under normal circumstances, but creating one for a writing project can get even more intense. Am I looking for songs for specific characters? Specific scenes? The overall mood? And then, of course, there are the songs that seem to crop up on every playlist I make. (As I asked on Twitter earlier: what is it that makes Imagine Dragons such good writing music?? I know, I’m typical.)

For the book I’m writing right now (which really needs a working title beyond “lesbian supersoldier road trip”), I specifically wanted to stick with female artists, which has been a lot of fun, and as a result Halestorm is one of my new favorite bands. Sometimes a single song seems to sum up a book, and in this case, it’s Emilie Autumn’s “Fight Like a Girl”: “I’m giving you a head start, / You’re going to need it, / ’Cause I fight like a girl.” (warning: some explicit lyrics at the link.)

It’s always interesting to revisit the playlist for a book that’s already written. I had a monster playlist for Vessel initially, but as the book took shape, some of the songs stopped seeming to fit. I put together a public version of my initial playlist on Spotify, if you’d like to listen along.

“Extraordinary”, Liz Phair

“When I’m Gone”, Three Doors Down

“Monster”, Imagine Dragons

“World Falls”, Indigo Girls

“Not a Pretty Girl”, Ani diFranco

“Cosmic Love”, Florence & the Machine

“Radioactive”, Imagine Dragons

“Somebody’s Watching Me”, Rockwell

“The Language or the Kiss”, Indigo Girls

“My Demons”, Starset

“Demons”, Imagine Dragons

I’ve been trying to think if there’s a song that sums up Vessel, and really, the closest I can get are a couple of songs that I associate most strongly with Catherine herself once she comes home. Ani diFranco’s “Not a Pretty Girl” captures the exasperation of not being listened to, and treated as something delicate.

And one of my personal favorite songs, “The Language or the Kiss” by the Indigo Girls, talks about feeling like an outsider, and about having to make choices between career and personal relationships. In particular, the lines, “But I’m made mute by the virtue of decision / And I choose most of your life goes on without me…” always make me think of Catherine’s relationship with Aimee, and the sacrifices that Catherine made–but also the sacrifices she asked of Aimee as well.

Inevitably, long after a book is finished, I hear a song that I hadn’t thought of and end up slapping my forehead. And knowing me, it’s probably by Imagine Dragons.

It’s true. Even if you’ve known me for years, I’ve been successfully deceiving you this entire time.

I am not a real writer. I’m not that smart. I was never any good at my job. I am not remotely together. I am, to quote one of my favorite movies, The Philadelphia Story, an “unholy mess of a girl.” And I always have been. Anyone who thinks otherwise has just been fooled by my cleverly-constructed façade.

Any of that sound familiar? If so, then you either have heard of, or are suffering from, impostor syndrome. Impostor syndrome is when you attribute any success to have to luck, or fooling people into believing you’re better than you are. And I have done both. A lot. Now, I will admit, I have been deeply, deeply fortunate in my writing career. Luck is a part of any writer’s career, and most of them will tell you so. But it’s easy for me to discount the work I’ve done, and the skill that I’ve developed, and those are just as important, if not more. After all, the luck doesn’t matter if the work isn’t there.

But I have to remind myself of that often. And it’s been the case as long as I can remember. I was lucky that I did well in school. I was only fooling people into believing I was a good employee or a good friend or a good person, even.

But it isn’t true for me, and it isn’t true for you either.

In a weird way, living in a world that’s so dominated by social media made my impostor syndrome easier to understand, as did my experience with learning to write. In both cases, what we see is a carefully curated image of someone’s life—or a final draft, in the case of writers. We don’t see the messy first drafts and the hair-pulling and the rewrites. We don’t see the pile of dishes out of frame of that gorgeous dinner picture on Instagram, or the toddler meltdown that showed up right after that perfectly adorable Facebook photo. That helped me realize everyone has a mess of some sort inside their heads. We just never see it, because usually we don’t show each other our messes—sometimes not even our closest friends. (Seriously, I may be open about a lot of things, but if you get to see how truly messy my brain is, it’s because I trust you with it.)

But the mess is there. Impostor syndrome is comparing your first draft to everyone else’s polished and edited final draft. I would argue, actually, that the bigger your mess, the more impressive it is that you still manage to have a polished “final draft” at all. That you should even more get credit for being together, not less—because you’ve taken that interior mess and polished it into something successful and good. How on earth could that be something to be ashamed of? Embrace your mess! Not only is it a part of you, but it’s the raw material you need to make the “you” that everyone around you sees.

(And in exciting news that should really kick my impostor syndrome to the curb: Vessel will be a Featured Alternate Selection for the Science Fiction Book Club this summer! And if you haven’t had a chance to check out the new front page of the site yet, Kirkus Reviews has called it “a welcome SF debut.”)

As the reviews for Vessel come in, I’m so, so happy to see many of them talk about the psychological elements of the story. That particular aspect of Catherine’s character was important to me, and one I wanted to get as accurate as possible. And… it’s one that I have a great deal of personal experience with. I debated talking about this, but I’m generally very open about it, and I feel strongly about being open about it. So… hi. I’m your friendly neighborhood writer, and I’m mentally ill. It’s something I’ve struggled with for most of my life, and PTSD is on my list of diagnoses. (I may address some of the others in the future, because hooboy, writing when you have ADHD is an experience.)

So when I was initially developing Catherine’s character, I wanted to think about how the trauma she has gone through affected her, and how she might cope with the aftermath. I also wanted to explore the line between the symptoms and events she experiences as a direct result of her PTSD,  and the things she experiences that she doesn’t believe are the result of PTSD. It can be incredibly frustrating to know something about your own mind, and to be disbelieved. It’s maddening. That said, sometimes when we’re coping with mental illness symptoms, we may think we know our own minds but don’t. So how do you tell the difference? How much of what you think you know is actually true?

It’s one of the core questions in Vessel, and frankly, in my day-to-day life. It’s easy to say that I’m having a bad day because I’m a terrible person who has done terrible things—when in fact, I might be having a bad day because my unhelpful brain is reliving some aspect of my past and making me think I’m a terrible person. Not to mention that it’s often easy to say, “Bah, I’m not mentally ill, I’m just a terrible person. What happened to me wasn’t that bad. Other people had it worse.” (Catherine does this quite a lot. So do I.) Ironically, minimizing the experienced trauma is a hallmark symptom of PTSD. Mental illness is the only category of illness I can think of that seems to actively work to convince the sufferer that it isn’t there and isn’t real.

Anyway, to put it another way: the brain can be a real pain in the ass sometimes.

And when it isn’t busy being a pain, it sometimes isn’t very subtle. I’ve heard it said that writers always put some aspect of themselves into their work, but I’m certain it’s not always as flamingly obvious as it is with me. As I was writing Vessel, I realized that every novel I have ever written (I think Vessel is #8, depending on how I count), and every novel I have on my mental to-write list, not to mention the one that I am writing right at this moment, all have, at their core, at least one woman who has faced some sort of trauma and is trying to recover. You should have seen the look on my face when I realized it. I sort of wanted to kick my subconscious for being so bad at subtlety. I complained to a friend, “It’s supposed to be my subconscious!”

None of these characters have had the same sort of trauma as me—to be honest, the trauma in my past is mundane and garden-variety, and not anything I’d want to write a book about. Since I love writing in larger-than-life settings and situations, the challenges my characters face are likewise larger-than-life. Here’s the thing, though. I may not have gone to prison for hacking into government servers like Gabe, one of the heroines of my current work-in-progress, but I understand the fears and emotional landmines she has to deal with as she tries to move on with her life. It’s a case of “writing what you know,” and I think, it’s the truest core of what that old writing saw means. “Write what you know” doesn’t mean that because I’m a middle-aged woman in the midwest who’s spent most of her working life in offices, that all I can write about are middle-aged women in the midwest who work in offices. It’s a case of finding parallels to your own experience, ways for you to get into writing a character that brings that character to life, gives them that spark of reality.

As I said at the beginning, I try to be open about my own experiences here. Although things are certainly better than they were when I was first diagnosed with depression, there are still a lot of misconceptions about mental illness out there, a lot of stigma, and a loooooot of bad media representation. I think I realize now: that’s also the reason it’s so much a part of my work, in stories that otherwise aren’t about mental illness. Because we’re out here, and although our malfunctioning brains are obviously a major part of our life experiences, they aren’t what defines us. Catherine’s PTSD isn’t all that she is. Gabe’s PTSD isn’t all that she is. My PTSD isn’t all that I am. We’re out here (or in books, I suppose), living our lives as best we can, just like everyone else. And that’s why I write so much about trauma. To show that we can live our lives despite what’s happened to us—and to show it not just to people who haven’t lived it, but to show it to people who are living it and aren’t certain there’s a way out of the depths.

The post Why I Write About Trauma appeared first on Lisa A. Nichols.

“I have learned that the kindness of a teacher, a coach, a policeman, a neighbor, the parent of a friend, is never wasted. These moments are likely to pass with neither the child nor the adult fully knowing the significance of the contribution. No ceremony attaches to the moment that a child sees his own worth reflected in the eyes of an encouraging adult.”

— Gavin de Becker, The Gift of Fear

The summer before 7th grade, I wrote my very first story, longhand in one of those black and white composition notebooks. I was eleven years old, and I was writing fanfic before I knew what fanfic was. The story–I will spare you the title, as it embarrasses me to this day–was about a high school rock band that gets discovered by my then-most-favoritest-band-in-the-world, Journey (it was 1983, and everybody else loved Duran Duran, but not me!), and gets catapulted to stardom. I had everything! My 16 year-old heroine had a smart best friend, a cute, loving boyfriend–both in the band with her. I had comic relief in the form of the band’s drummer. I remember doing actual research about San Francisco to try and find locations where the story might take place. The story ends with our heroes hearing their first single on America’s Top 40 (which way back then was still a radio show hosted by Kasey Kasem). I was so pleased with myself, and excited. I had written an entire story. All by myself. Heck, I even envisioned two sequels: the second dealing with the pitfalls of fame (the drummer was going to *gasp* develop a drug addiction!) and the third dealing with settling into their awesome new lives years later. (I apparently have always wanted to write series.)

When school started that fall, I kept writing. I wrote a science fiction story set in a dystopia where science ruled and any form of magic was banned (I’m fairly certain this idea came from something I’d read), and of course, the hero had ESP and had to hide it. He was discovered (also of course), and Terrible Things happened to him… but at the end the hero woke up and discovered IT WAS ALL A DREAM, and went outside to see his neighbors openly using magic. I also made what was, in hindsight, an attempt at comedic urban fantasy. For some reason, the phrase “west Texas fairy godmother” had popped into my head and I thought it was funny. (I… actually still do.)

I didn’t show any of this to anyone. My parents were both very practical people, and didn’t understand my intensely involved inner life of books and daydreams and stories. They knew I spent a lot of time scribbling in my composition book, and that I was “writing stories”, but never asked about them. I had some friends at school, but no one I really trusted with something this important to me. Just taking the notebook with me to school was fraught. I was badly bullied in middle school, and I was terrified one of my bullies would find my notebook.

But my English teacher that year, Mrs. Haines, seemed super cool and I was desperate for any sort of affirmation about my writing. So I approached her one day after class and told her that I wrote stories, and would she mind reading one of them? She said she’d love to, and I handed her my precious composition book and told her about the first story.

I don’t remember how long it took her, but I was on tenterhooks the whole time. Would she like it? Would she laugh at me? Finally one day after class, she gave me back my notebook with a big smile. She’d read everything. The whole notebook. I don’t remember exactly what she’d said–I wish I did–but she made it clear that she thought writing was a fantastic thing to do, and that I should keep doing it.

I’m heartbroken that somewhere along the way I lost that composition book–not just for the stories, but because she made notes here there, mostly encouraging reactions, pointing out good things. A few grammar corrections–she was my English teacher after all. I still am drawn to those black and white composition books–I have several even today, with notes and snippets of stories scribbled down.

Mrs. Haines’ reaction reassured me that I wasn’t weird for wanting to write down stories. She made me think that maybe I might even… be good at it.

The first time I realized books happened because someone wrote them, I was five years old, and already an avid reader–I was tearing through the Little House books. I asked for and got a typewriter for Christmas because I told my parents I wanted to “make books.” Books weren’t handwritten, you see. I needed to type them. (My mom–see above, very practical–thought learning how to type would be a good job skill.)

That fall when I was eleven, though, that was the first time I really started thinking I wanted to be someone who wrote books. That was the first time I saw there might be something special in me, something unique and valuable.

Since I started thinking about this, I’ve been trying to find a way to contact Mrs. Haines, to let her know what she did for me, and how she changed my life. No luck yet, but if I manage it, I will post an update.

Did you have a Mrs. Haines in school? What did they do for you?

The post The Kindness of a Teacher appeared first on Lisa A. Nichols.

Before I dive into why the Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame are like romance novels, I wanted to share some great news! Publishers Weekly reviewed Vessel and called it a ‘tense, character-driven debut.’” I might have spent part of the day bouncing around my living room squealing, but I refuse to confirm it.

Welcome to the final post of six in a series, “I Have a Story Idea, Now What?” Come on in as we talk about performing surgery on your new baby.

Obligatory disclaimer: there is no one true way to write or outline or plot or edit. What I’ll be doing in these posts is talking about how I do things, and why, and what I’ve struggled with. Feel free to use anything that seems useful and ignore the rest.

So you’ve written your story. Now what? Surely the worst part is over, right?

Sadly, no. I used to think this way, that editing was the equivalent of proofreading your paper right before handing it in during class. I was very wrong. Editing is more like cooking. You have your pile of ingredients that hopefully go together, and now you have to make sure they’re prepped and put together properly. (If your pile of ingredients looks like a basket on Chopped, you are either a genre-twisting genius, or you might want to consider which of the three books you have jumbled together you actually want to write.