apocalypsos | I think I left my jaw on the floor in the bathroom.

Oh, man, there's nothing like waking up on a rainy morning, being too groggy to stop myself from clicking on a new RaceFail post, and getting to read a rec.arts.sf.composition quote from Patricia Wrede from during the planning stages of The Thirteenth Child in which she ponders how to write around the Native population since they won't be around to engage in "prepping land for human occupation."

o.O

WHAT.

I had to get up and walk away from my computer for a moment after reading that, and then I got to come back and read the bit where, upon pondering how best to kill off an entire indigenous people, she dismisses endemic conditions (like, say, smallpox) as too complicated and ridiculous but concludes having them all be eaten by giant hungry magical creatures is "nice, effective, and tidy."

I think I need to go work on my crackalicious completely stress-free bisexual rockabilly superhero novel now. Before my brain explodes.

*

Yeah, so. It's rainy and gross and I'm about to shower and pack up my crap and head over to the cafe to see if I can get a good chunk of chapter fifteen done. I blame RaceFail for keeping me on my mark, because I've got a bisexual Mexican-American woman as my main character and I already know I'm going to have to go back and tweak shit for pretty much every single one of those identifiers, although at least the "woman" part I think I can handle. (I made it real easy on myself, too. Offline, I know of absolutely no Mexican-Americans and only one possible bisexual I haven't gotten a chance to talk to since St. Patrick's Day whom I can pester for help. *eyeroll*)

But, yeah. Right now it's hard not to be heavy on the sexuality aspect, since the possible love interests are the ex-girlfriend and the new guy, but I know I need to work on the Mexican-American bit. I keep worrying I'm keeping it too subtle (which I suppose is better right now, at least considering the way I write and edit) or that I'm going to screw it up, because seriously, it took watching a LOT of RaceFail moments over the years to get me to the point where I'm more comfortable writing outside my comfort spectrum of tiny-little-straight-white-girl. (The first couple of books I tried writing in college and right after were all tiny-little-straight-white-girl and also terrible. Ugh.)

I'm good now, though. Well, okay, not perfect, obviously, but I'm willing to accept help and advice on all counts. (Although not right now, if only because if I stop right now, I'll never finish this silly book. Urgh.) And hell, at least I think I can peek my head out from behind my white privilege far enough not to make a "prepping land for human occupation" crack.