Hi everyone! Back from the Philippines for our regularly scheduled programming. I flew out with my family on May 30, the day before The Seaglass Blade launched, and woke up after a fourteen-hour flight completely unstuck in time. We spent almost three weeks traveling via bus, car, and ferry: Baguio (cool [temperature wise!] and fun to walk around eating taho every day); Bolinao and the Hundred Islands (giant clams! fruit bats! jumping into the ocean in a limestone cave!); a day or so in Metro Manila, just getting our breath; and a few days in Sabang, near Puerta Galera, diving and snorkeling and enjoying all the beauty. It was an amazing trip, and I am so grateful, as always, that when we do this every few years we’re accompanied by my wife’s family. My in-laws are incredible people, oriented toward spirituality, social justice, and compassion, and traveling anywhere with them is a joy.
From the Philippines, lower right through upper left: a giant clam in Bolinao (they’re very beautiful!); the sea at Patar before a storm; night over Sabang; me eating taho in Bauguio; me at the Igorot Stone Village, also in Baguio; the view of Baguio from our transient house.
So I missed most of Pride Month due to unstable wifi connections and jetlag, but I was able to share some thoughts on Pride via Instagram. It was one of the more vulnerable posts I’ve made, and I wanted to share it at least the text of it with you as well. Pride is a very important holiday to me, not just because I love rainbow flags, but because what Pride envisions is a better world for all people, based in protest against injustice and demands for inclusion and respect for difference. Pride is caring for one another regardless of the world’s opinion, recognizing injustice where it’s happening and standing against it.
I came out at eighteen in the 90’s. My family was super Catholic—as was I. Getting sent to have a long conversation with the priest had everything to do with why I got a doctorate in religious studies.
Having pride in myself—who I was, who I loved—meant that nothing would stop me from living the life I was given.
When the world told all of us to be ashamed, Pride is how I kept going.
Coming out is a risk. It was then, and for many people, it still is now.
I want the world to be safer for all of us.
Being out is also a joy, and so much of my life has been built from it: my family, my writing, my stories, my travels.
I attended my first Pride parade in New York City and thought:
this is the world that I want to exist.
Kids celebrated for who they are, queer trekkies, leather dykes, feathered and fabulous queens, dozens of different languages; the protests, the dancing, the anger, the joy.
How we all had pride in one another when the world despised us.
I don’t always write queernorm; the world I want to exist isn’t yet here.
Sometimes I need to write about the world that hates us,
and how we fight back with love and determination.
But always,
I want to center our queer lives and loves,
and the vast worlds we dream of.
Pride is for everyone:
everyone who celebrates those who are excluded;
everyone who fights for the rights of others to be who they are;
everyone who is afraid and longs for safety and acceptance.
Pride is for you.
Writing updates
I’m officially On Sub! That means that my agent has taken my fantasy novel to editors at publishing companies, to see if they’re interested in this story of a sapphic musician and the woman who’s secretly in love with her, who must save their nation from monsters by creating a magical border at a cost they can’t imagine. It’s my first time being On Sub, and I have no idea how it’s going to go, so it’s all just exciting.
It’s also exciting to get back to my other new novel, the one that in March was just vibes and tropes and a baby soundtrack. Before I got derailed in April and May by the release of Seaglass, freelance work, family stuff, and traveling, I had gotten to around 14,000 words plus a lot of handwritten notes and outlining. I’m just starting to dig back in this week. Drafting something completely new is hard after over a year working primarily with later revisions of Seaglass and the mapmaker novel. I know what I want the book to feel like, how I want it to be layered and nuanced and full of reveals, and I know that what I’m writing now is decidedly not it. I can only get there if I keep writing to the end, and then go back into it and do all the beautiful polishing and depth I’m dreaming of for this book…but first I have to keep writing stuff I know is not very good, and it’s hard!
P.S.: I’m looking for a few fans of my books, and fans of fantasy and sapphic fantasy in general (who might not have read my books!) to help me understand my readers and the market better by answering a few questions about the kind of books you love and how you find them. If you’re up for this, please comment below, or send an email to admin at jcsnow.com, or a DM on Instagram!