Out of Spoons Error

[anthimeria]

I decided to shelve the werewolf book for the moment.

This is still a story I want to tell; these are still people I want to see on my bookshelves. I initially went with the werewolf book idea in the first place because even though there are many urban fantasy books with werewolves (and I usually do my best not to write something the market is saturated with, at least not with the intention to publish), I wanted to write about intersectionality and werewolves.

 

These were the werewolves no one was writing books about, because we don't have a place in mainstream urban fantasy for main characters who aren't white, who are nonneurotypical, who are disabled, who are queer. They (or secondary characters) might be one of these things, but I can't think of a book with more than one character who is several of these things, that also passes the Bechdel test. For a genre known for having strong female leads (or at least, gun-toting or sword-toting female leads), a surprising number only pass the Bechdel test by the skin of their teeth, if they pass it at all.

Every character in my book is a werewolf, and every character fits into several of these categories, and my cast is majority-female, and I want to write it because I don't see myself or my friends or the diversity of people I want to read about in urban fantasy. So I said, I will write a book that is deliberately about these characters, and about how being all these things and being a werewolf can suck, and how if multiple oppressions are compounded by keeping a whole huge part of your life secret (by which I mean being a werewolf in a human world, though that's not necessarily the only secret my characters have), then what happens?

And also there is a semi-horror thriller plotline, and all these people bumbling around hurting each other while they try not to, and magic and girl-power and running around in the woods with fur on four legs because they can and because it's joyful. I want to write about these people but I don't want to write The Big Issue Urban Fantasy Book. I want to write an interesting, enthralling urban fantasy that happens to have a whole bunch of outcasts as the main characters.

Right now that is very much not happening, as my day job upheaval continues (though there might be a light at the end of the tunnel—I really hope it's not the Hogwarts Express) and my need to have the mental energy to go back to Skywatch increases. I also think I may be going about the book itself in the wrong way, which will require more distance and more energy than I have.

As of this moment I still plan to write this book, or one that looks an awful lot like it, but I don't think I can write it now.

So I'm going to start doing the very beginnings of research for Moxie (Moxie is going to require months, if not years, of research, and that research will likely continue as long as I keep writing the series)—research without goals, just background reading whenever I happen to have the mental energy and a free half hour, because my life is not working with writing goals at the moment. I also plan to go back to Skywatch soon; mental energy or not, I really needs must get that out there.