Seal Wives and Fae Women: A Parable of Lost Girls

John Bauer, The Princess and the Trolls, public domain image

I wrote this poem back in January, which feels like a thousand years ago now. I held off posting it because I know how hard a year it’s been for doctors and how many of them have also succumb to an illness not yet understood, abandoned and devalued like so many of us chronically ill folks were long before Covid-19. But, given the attitudes towards disabled and chronically ill people in the US and the UK especially (“Just stay home!” or “Hurry up and die and decrease the surplus population!”), the people in retirement homes and other institutions left to die, the all too familiar plight of those with “Long Haul Covid”, and the continual dismissal of disabled and chronically ill voices in a time when we have real wisdom to offer–be it about finding yourself to still be ill when doctors can’t explain it or won’t believe it, coping with a reality that isn’t any less real just because we don’t want it to be or find it too hard to bear, or making due in isolation without adequate support systems–make this poem’s message all the more necessary. It’s my story and millions of others’; now, last year, and a thousand years before me. But I sincerely hope not a thousand years hence.

It’s the Last Midnight

Hey, all. For those of you who aren’t already aware from the constant reblogged author interviews, I have a short story in an upcoming own voices disability themed anthology called Nothing Without Us. What does own voices mean, you ask? In this case it means that all the stories in the anthology feature disabled, deaf, neurodiverse, mentally ill, and/or chronically ill main characters written by actual disabled, deaf, neurodiverse, mentally ill, and/or chronically ill authors! And this anthology is extra special in that it also has disabled publishers, so everyone involved in this project from beginning to end has the lived experience these stories are trying to accurately represent and explore. And not a bit of inspiration porn in sight!

Lessons from History (and a Midnight Research Rabbithole)

Some of you may be familiar with my horror short, “East of the Midnight Sun, West of the Full Moon”, which is told from the point of view of a young Alaskan woman named Senka. Senka’s grandmother came to America when her family fled Europe to escape the Holocaust and this legacy both haunts and drives Senka as she sees history begin to repeat itself. While writing this story, I went down a research rabbithole into everything from average winter temperatures in Barrow, Alaska to how to kill vampires in various cultures’ mythologies to the history of antiziganism. Oh, the eyebrow raises my search history and open tabs would get. 

Save Healthcare

Spring Break 2010 because I know how to party

In September 2008, I was a seemingly normal, healthy college student. I was active, I had friends, I’d done well in all my classes, and I was just starting my sophomore year. Then, one day, I was walking home from the dining hall and collapsed. In October 2008, I was unable to get to class because I couldn’t stand up without collapsing. The next few years I fought to stay in college (against medical advice) and to find a diagnosis for why I kept collapsing, having seizures, and experiencing tachycardia along with numerous other symptoms.

Our Lives Matter

Look Ma, No Hands!

So, I’d like to start by apologizing for the dry spell here and the barren wasteland that is my other blog. My health has taken priority lately. But I have not been entirely absent on the writing front, just the blogging front. I have a number of updates to share.

Your daily dose of Salt and Iron

Hello, dear readers. Lately I’ve been posting a lot about my books. While I in no way promise for the shameless self-promotion to stop, I would like to post more things in between. What would you like to see? More writing prompts? More recipes or salty food experiments? More personal essays? More art? More microfiction? What interests you most here on the blog:

The Five Stages: A Dance of Dysautonomia

A dancer with POTS by the name of Rebecca Webb choreographed the following dance about her grieving process when POTS sidelined her from dancing. It’s a beautiful performance regardless, but this video really captures a lot of the feelings involved in coming to terms with a chronic illness like POTS, or another another similarly life-changing event. Whether you have a chronic illness, know someone with one, or just like watching good dancers, I highly recommend giving it a watch.

Stone Soup #2: Greek Green Goddess Soup

Over the holidays I obtained a crockpot. Remember that awesome feeling when you were a kid and you got that awesome thing that made everything aweseome forever? I am not afraid to admit that’s how I feel about this crockpot. As I said in the last Stone Soup, I like making soup because it is a healthy way to get salt and veggies and I can hoard it like a dragon playing disability roulette and not worrry about making food on days when standing is hard. However, when making soup on the stovetop, I usually end up on the kitchen floor approximately 1-3 times. The crockpot allows me to throw everything in (just when I would normally have to take a break anyway) and not deal with food again for several hours.

The Invisible Man: speculative fiction and disability

That’s how we roll in sci-fi.

I don’t know if any of you have seen the infographic floating around about representation in science fiction movies or not, but I wanted to talk about an issue I had with it, namely what constitutes a “protagonist with a disability”. I won’t post a link to the infographic here because my intention is not to call it or its creator out. In fact, I applaud them for raising awareness of representation issues. However, I am bothered by the infographic’s problematic take on this specific issue, as well as by this discussion in general (which seems to happen every few years when there is a renewed controversy over Barbara Gordon).