Laura Preble's Blog

 

 It's a new year, as everyone has no doubt mentioned. And, like everyone else, I like to take a few moments to reflect on my work this past year. There's not much to say...I was singularly unproductive in many ways in 2014, at least from a commercial perspective. But I like to think of it as a cocoon year, a year where ideas and concepts and characters rested and mingled and brewed into whatever they will become. 

 

I am hoping that 2015 is a butterfly year. 

 

 I have two projects currently at the forefront of my consciousness. One is fiction, one is humorous non-fiction. (I really sort of hate the word 'humorous'. It is the most serious word I can think of for something that is supposed to be sharp and fun and witty. It just sounds like a clinical diagnosis. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but you have a touch of the humorous." Need a better word. Comic? Too clubb-y. Funny? Too sit-com. C'mon, English langauge. Help me out!)  

 

Keep tuned for excerpts from these two projects if you are interested. Also, if you are a frequent watcher of this space, I'd love any suggestions on how to make it better. Web design isn't really my area of expertise, and I'm sure there are things here that could be much more effective. Email me at preblebooks at gmail dot com. 

 

 Happy Butterfly Year! 

Free to be, nevermore.

 

I now have 200 pages of my next book finished. When I read it, I am very disappointed to get to the point where I stopped. It's like I'm reading someone else's book, and I want more. Yet, I avoid writing almost every day. Why is this?

 

I believe it is because I am a self-defeating Pinocchio. My strings are the ties to this old world, which turns whether I care or not. I work my job, I care about things that, in retrospect, do not matter, things like which spine labels are on the books in the library, or whether or not kids eat between the stacks. Sure, these things matter on a day-to-day basis, but in the long term, big scheme of life, the universe, and everything? Nah.

 

So why am I so wrapped up in this stuff? Well, some of it is just life. I have a son on the autism spectrum (and Jesus, that took me years to be able to write, let me tell you), and doing even the simplest stuff with him is a Battle Royale. Homework? Torture, for both of us. Showers? Trickery and deception in the form of Ed Hardy cologne and baby powder. Eating real food? I find Cheeto packets under the couch. He's only 11. I will never make it past his puberty, I am sure. His pits smell. He has classified the pit smell into two distinct categories: minor and major. When you live with a person who quantifies their body odor, how can you realistically focus on stuff like finishing a novel, even if it's good?

 

And it is good. I am very proud of what I've written. I've had great response to it from my writer's critique group. It feels different from my other books, more special. And yet, here I am, avoiding it. What is my problem?

 

Life, I guess. Life and autism, and jobs, and groceries, and mortgages, and stuff. At times like this I sort of wish I could run away and live (with my family) in Oregon or Washington, surrounded by trees and running rivers and oxygen. I desperately want to simplify my life. I think this is an old person thing. My parents did this. Whenever I asked them what they wanted for a birthday or Christmas, they always said the same thing, "nothing. We have enough stuff." I didn't believe them then, but now I do.

 

I just cut my hair, much to the chagrin of my male family members who like it long. It feels more free, a bit jaunty, more unexpected. I feel I need to reach out to the universe and claim my portion of unexpected results. Writing is part of that. So, I need to stop avoiding it with the mundane. I need to disappear despite the fact that I am the only one who knows where the ketchup is in the refrigerator, and the only one who knows when the homework is due, and the only one who can somehow remember to fill the water bottles and water the cat.

 

Onward and upward. Some strings are fraying at the edges, and soon, I will be floating weightless in the puppet theater of my own design.

From DeviantArt. 

 

It seems that I have not posted a blog since February. Hmmm. I've been quite the slacker. 

 

There are several reasons why I haven't been posting. First, and perhaps most relevant, is that I didn't think anybody was reading it. Maybe they aren't. Maybe nobody will read this one. However, this brings me to reason number 2. 

 

Reason 2 that I have not been posting: I have let myself forget about what I need to do to be part of the world. I have slipped in past months into a comfortable sort of conscious coma. I have avoided writing, despite knowing that writing is one of the few things that makes me feel connected to life, the universe, and everything. It is the image I hold in my mind of my 'real', or authentic, life. 

 

Like Pinnochio, I have longed to become 'real' without realizing that I already was. 

 

It started with a new job in the fall. I became a librarian, which is ridiculously fun, but carries its own freight in terms of stigmas and the feeling that I have given up on what has been my life-long dream to become a 'real' writer. How could I call myself an author if I had such a sizeable 'day job'?  Now I was on the hook for going to school again to earn the appropriate credential too. Where would I find time to write? Would I never become real?

 

My many measure of success, I've done okay. I've published five books to small success. I've been involved in many conferences and projects. But the holy grail has eluded me. I wanted (and still want) to be a writer who writes as a primary function, not as a side job or a fun hobby whenever time allows. This is what I would deem 'real'. 

 

And because of that, I have not been writing, not as much as I should be. I've resisted the urge, even when it tugs at me. Why would I do that? I've found distractions galore, Facebook being the prime culprit. How easy it is to fall into the pleasantly numbing and never-ending feed of silly videos and clever memes, the drama of friends' lives and the daily rantings of everyone in the world (almost literally)? As I spend hour after hour monitoring the ill-named news feed, I am conscious of time ticking, but seem unable to draw myself away from this. I might miss something. I might not see something clever that resonates with my nerdy core. I might miss a cat riding a vacuum cleaner. 

 

I've been in a media coma long enough. Here, in this space, I am committing to breaking out of this pixel shell that has contained me and lulled me into laziness. I am going to write every day and finish my new novel. I am going to stop telling myself that what I say does not matter. That is not a relevant point. It matters because I need to say it, not because anyone else needs to read it. 

 

Cutting strings. Hoping for the best. Encouragement welcome. 

 

I was contacted by an amazing young woman named Amelia, who started a program called MAKE IT SAFE. She collects and ships books with positive LGBT messages to high schools so students have a chance of seeing that they are reflected in literature. Here's the link: http://makeitsafeproject.org/  Check it out!

 

She asked me to write a blog for her site, so I'm reprinting it here since I sort of liked it. Enjoy! And feel free to comment!

 

WOULD YOU  HIDE?

I’ve written an LGBT-themed book, but I’m not LGBT. Some people don’t see how this is possible, but here’s why it is: I’m a human being.

 

My book, Out, is a speculative fiction book where opposite-sex couples (perpendiculars) are criminalized, while same-sex couples (parallels) are in the majority and run the theocratic government. It’s really a love story, though; a minister’s son, Chris, finds himself in love with a person his society and his church have told him he cannot love: a girl.

 

Before the book was even published, people complained about it, and said that I had no right to write this book since I was not LGBT myself, and I couldn’t possibly understand the struggles. Of course, that’s partly true, but that is true for every person on this planet. None of us lives in the other’s shoes. None of us knows what story another person is truly living. The best we can do is try to communicate something true.

 

As the mother of a gay son, I have seen my share of judgment, discrimination, and downright hatred. No, it wasn’t pointed directly at me, but as anyone who’s had a child knows, when you child is attacked, so are you. I was a teacher in his high school when someone vandalized the school and spray painted on my door, ‘your son is a faggot’.  I had to watch him as he walked proudly around the school, a 6’3 budding drag queen who never apologized for who he was, as comments were whispered and looks were exchanged. I knew he had to change clothes in the teacher’s restroom for four years because the locker room was too painful.

 

And I helped him fight. I had been the advisor for our schools’ Gay Straight Alliance even before he came out in 8th grade. I’d championed LGBT students throughout my entire teaching career. I stood with him at a school board meeting when he and several of his friends complained when the board supported the hate-based YES ON PROP 8, California’s referendum against gay marriage.  And in large part I wrote my novel because I felt that flipping the reality in such a drastic way might actually make the blind see.

 

That’s a tall order for a book, I know. But I kept wondering why these people couldn’t understand that love is love. Anatomy is irrelevant. Why could they not understand this? Then it hit me one day. They don’t understand because, in our world, it is inconceivable to them that they would be denied the person they love.

 

Straight privilege had imbued them with the implied understanding that no one would ever tell them they could not be who they were born to be.

 

But how to make that clear, and more importantly, how to give it an emotional punch? The answer, to me, was clear. Show a world where straight people couldn’t love other straight people. How would it feel? What would you do? Would you deny who you are? Would you change for your parents? Would you hide? Would you rebel? All the questions our LGBT youth have had to wrestle with for decades were flipped and posed to those who had never considered what it would feel like if it happened to them.

 

This is why I wrote the book. I wanted someone who is straight to try to feel what it would be like to be disenfranchised. To feel how that inequity festers in the gut, to ultimately feel sympathy, empathy, and the injustice of it all. And maybe if those people feel it, even in a fictional world, they’d begin to have an understanding of why it needs to change.

 

No matter who you are, it is a blessing to love someone and be loved in return.

 

It has been a WHILE since I've visited my own blog. Slacker. 

I started a new job, we had a death in the family, and other dramatic life events. So what? I still have to write, yeah? I have been. Just not visibly. 

So, I'm trying to get back on track with this blog. I haven't been on it for some time, but I will try to resolve to be more diligent in blogging for all of the many (none) readers who follow this space. 

So, how've you been? I've been okay. I am still pushing OUT..I haven't given up on it yet...but it often feels like I am but a drop in a huge ocean. But as one of my favorite books (Cloud Atlas) notes, "What is the ocean but a multitude of drops?"  Maybe my drop will land somewhere that can give my book some notice. We'll see. If not, then I guess that's just how it is. 

I am working on a new novel that is geared toward adults, which is exactly probably what i should not be doing, according to conventional wisdom. I mean, if I've had success (even small) in the YA arena, that's what I should write. But this story has been begging to be told, and it is what is on my mind, so I'm writing it. If anyone is interested in a sneak peek, let me know. I can post a bit of it on the website. 

I think I'll go write now. 

I've clearly been absent from this blog since March. I'm a reprobate. 

Why have I been gone so long? Nobody probably cares, really, but here's why: I finished up my last semester of teaching high school, ever. (I think.) I am going to be a librarian at a different high school. I am greatly relieved and excited and all kinds of things. But it took up a lot of time and emotion at the end of June. And then I went to Kauai for a week and squeezed in a book signing at Talk Story, one of the coolest bookstores ever. And there were chickens all over Kauai, in case you were curious about the title. 

Now, to ComicCon. I'm not going this year. It's here in San Diego, and I should go -- I love science fiction, comics, games, movies, all the pop culture stuff that grinds the gears of ComicCon. Why am I not? Simply, I am now unable to tolerate large masses of humanity. I'm not sure when this happened...I used to go (but it was smaller then, really, and no waiting on line for five hours) and I loved it. When I was younger, I went to concerts and didn't find myself too horribly panicky. But now, I find that when I am in a large place with many people, I am really not happy. It's not really a panic attack, per se, but I'm just grumpy and want to go somewhere else and take off my shoes. Am I old? Who cares? 

I am off for the summer, supposedly writing. Have I been writing much? Not really. I should be doing it now, but instead, I'm blogging. I've spent most of my free time on the interwebs, twitting and facebasking and emolting. The pressure to market my book OUT is great; there are SO MANY BOOKS out there .Mine is one more. Again with the crowd issue. 

So, I need to get back to the garden, back to where I write because I like it, not market because I need to. Jincy Willett, one of my heroes (she will hate that I said that, probably), just published a book called AMY FALLS DOWN and it's all about these very issues, so I feel as if it dropped into my lap at just the right moment. Unfortunately, Jincy's writer protagonist handles all this shit about as well as I do. So, no hope there. 

Guess I'll go write something. 

I'm featured in the author profile of today's San Diego Union Tribune:


http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/m...

I love it when young adults read my young adult books. They always confirm something for me: that what I'm writing speaks to them. They let me know that, even if adult readers may not get it, they do. 

 

Case in point: a couple of weeks ago, I did a presentation at the school where I teach. I spoke to a group of about 40 students, all of whom had asked to be there. We talked a lot about OUT, and about the general treatment of LGBT people, and a lot of other things. Talking with teenagers who want to have a conversation is one of the best things in the world. 

 

It reminds me of why I like to teach. 'Young adults' are almost adults, but not quite, which means they are smart enough and savvy enough to talk about abstract concepts and big ideas. It also means that they haven't yet become frozen or entrenched in a particular philosphy. They're still open to hearing things that are new. Of course, there are also many adults who remain this way, but not most. 

 

We talked that day about why the world is the way it is, why books are written, why people continue to read. It gave me hope. Those 'young adults' had some very profound things to say, and when I contrasted our conversations with most of the 'adult' conversations I hear every day, I realized that most of us (adults) are stuck (or choose to be stuck) talking about things that are byproducts of the important stuff.  We talk about bills and traffic and data and pain. We talk about medicine and toxins and tax breaks and politics. Those things do matter, but not in the grand scheme of things. When you're on your deathbed, you're not going to remember what your tax rate was in the year 2012. You most likely won't remember how much gas cost. And whatever medicines we're taking now may or may not be causing cancer in 20 years. 

 

I love to talk about 'what if' questions, and so do young adults. Their worlds are not yet fixed or set; they are still open to all possibilities. Their passion is undeniable. So many of us lose that as we grow older, like the color fading out of a beautiful painting left in a sunny window. But they are still vibrant. They still get excited about things, even things they read. 

 

Over the past week, a dozen or so students have dropped by my classroom to breathlessly comment on my book. One popped in and just said, "it's so sad!" and another said, "I read it and now I'm reading it again!"  One told me it's now her favorite book, and another said she felt uncomfortable watching the straight kids making out in the hall because her mind was still living inside the world of OUT.  

 

No matter how successful the book becomes, I feel like I accomplished something. The students reading the book and telling me what they think has invigorated me. It's restored a bit of color to my fading canvas. THANK YOU, young adults!

I had my first real book event for OUT on Sunday. It was not the hugest crowd in history, but I was in a room full of people who supported me and loved my work, so all in all, a good Sunday. 

 

I started to sign books, and the phrase 'be who you were born to be' popped into my head. I realized that this phrase is really a great mantra for the book. It also speaks to the controversy surrounding LGBT rights and the general climate of treatment in the world of LGBT people. 

 

Someone at the book signing said that the idea for the book "blew my mind" and reframed the conversation about LGBT rights, gay marriage, all of those things. I was so happy, because that was exactly what I wanted. I wanted to write a book that would (or at least could, given the right exposure) change the conversation, redirect people away from the ridiculous arguments that seem to pop up every time the issue  is discussed. 

 

Here's the thing: people are born to be who they are. We all come with a blueprint. Being LGBT isn't any different than being blue-eyed, Asian, female, or tall. Nobody chooses those things. We are what we are, a complete and wonderful package born onto this earth to do our thing, whatever it is. It's a shame that some people make it so tough for us to do and be who we were born to be. 

 

As to reframing the conversation, here's why I think the book could do that: it asks readers to put themselves in the shoes of a couple forbidden to love. The anatomy makes little difference; the fact that their world says they can't be together is the important point. But to people who are on the fence about LGBT rights, this could show them WHY it's crticial. The book can speak to the human condition of being told by society that who you are, who you were fundamentally born to be, is wrong or doesn't matter or can be changed. 

 

And this is something that must change. It will change. I want to do what I can to make that happen. 

 

Hey all...there's a new online blogradio show that features authors and books. It's relatively new, so give it a listen and please pass it on to your author friends.

Here's a promo for my upcoming interview, which will be February 25 (Monday) at 7 p.m. Central time (5 for us Pacific coasters).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9duY7...