22 Authors Discuss X-Men, Media Visibility, and More in September’s YA Open Mic

YA Open Mic is a monthly series in which YA authors share personal stories on topics of their choice. The aim of the series is to peel away the formality of bios and offer authors a platform to talk about something readers won’t necessarily find on their websites.
This month, 22 authors discuss everything from record stores to X-Men. All have YA books that either release this month or released in recent months. Check out previous YA Open Mic posts here.

Beth Revis, author of Give the Dark my Love

It’s impossible for me to divorce my heart from my words. No matter how much I put the story first, there is always something of me in each of my characters. But rarely is there something of me in the plot. My stories take place in space, or the future, or in fantasy worlds. The plot is always invented and impossible. My characters have feelings rooted in reality—love, fear, hope—but the adventures they have are all entirely fictional.
Except when they’re not.
Give the Dark my Love is about a girl who grasps power, even a dark power like necromancy. And let me assure you now that is not the part that’s based on me—I have not raised the dead (yet). But for my main character, Nedra, to get to the point of using this dark power, I had to have her experience loss.
And that’s the part that’s real.
Give the Dark my Love is the last book my father read. He read all my books, even the ones with pink covers and kissing people on the front, and I gave him an early draft of this book that I printed at home. He took it with him on vacation, and read the whole thing, and told me when he came home that it was my best book yet. A few months later—actually the week after his retirement party—he went to the doctor because he had a pain that wouldn’t go away in his shoulder. That pain was from bone cancer. The bone cancer was from pancreatic cancer. And then, in just a few weeks, he was gone.
Give the Dark my Love has changed from the version my father read. It’s been edited and expanded and grown. But I’m glad that there’s a version that only one person ever read. It was entirely his. It makes it easier for me to give the world this book, knowing he had it first and last.

Keah Brown, contributor to Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens

I used to believe that courage was a thing for superheroes on TV shows and movies. Courage for superheroes eagerly awaiting the chance to save the day. When I was younger I believed the real world to be a place built for survival alone. The urgency with which I dismissed courage as a real thing should have been alarming but I was set in my ways and angry at the cards I had been dealt in life.
My cards:

•         A physical disability (Cerebral Palsy)
•         A mathematical learning disability
•         An inability to do seemingly simple things like riding a bike because of my CP

I spent my teenage years thinking that I was cursed and being punished by God and the world at large. Every time I saw a story of courage I rolled my eyes, I let myself believe that these stories were mocking me, superheroes were not real so I could never be one and have the courage to save the day or myself. Let me tell you dear reader: I was so wrong. On December 28, 2016, I became a superhero. I wasn’t bit by a radioactive spider, no one built me a super suit to rival Tony Stark’s. on that day in 2016, all it took was a mirror and some affirmations of physical, mental, and emotional worth. We are all superheroes, that’s what I believe now. We have the ability to survive yes, but survival takes courage. When you wake up every single day and you try? That’s worth celebrating, that’s courage. We do not need to save the world to be worthy enough to live in it. The courage we have can just be used to save ourselves from ourselves. I want to leave you with this: do not wait to love yourself, to see that your survival takes courage.

Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, author of Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree

As a Nigerian journalist reporting mainly on humanitarian issues in my country and around Africa, sometimes it can appear as if my stories are reinforcing the popular stereotypes of Africa as a continent of carnage and turmoil.
But, as a friend of mine once noted, the real tragedy is not the negative stories about Africa that the international media tends to focus on, but the sheer volume of negative stories that are still unknown or untold. How will the world know about these many current and urgent crises if nobody tells them? How will the victims get help if nobody hears their cries? Sadly, many Nigerians and Africans appear so used to the everyday inhumanities around us that they have become desensitized. It often takes a jolt from outside to move us to act or react.
In February 2014, the Boko Haram terrorist group attacked a school in Buni Yadi, northeast Nigeria, and slaughtered forty boys in their dormitory. The tragedy was little more than a nine days’ wonder. Nigerians soon moved on to the next headline. About six weeks later, Boko Haram kidnapped over two hundred schoolgirls from their dormitory in Chibok, northeast Nigeria. The international media frenzy that followed sparked a global Bring Back Our Girls campaign for the girls’ release. The Nigerian government and international allies then launched an unprecedented attack on the Sambisa Forest hideout of Boko Haram, freeing thousands of women and girls in the process. The majority were captured at least a year before the Chibok girls were taken; prior to the global outrage, their plight had been largely ignored.
It’s nice to see more and more photos of vibrant Africans arrayed in the latest fashions occupying international media space once reserved solely for starving babies and gaunt widows. Still, I’m less concerned about the negative narratives about Africa and more about addressing the sordid situations that birth those narratives in the first place.

Maura Milan, author of Ignite the Stars

The ’90s were a good time for X-Men. They had just gone through a revamp in the comics, with all of the core members getting redesigns and new costumes through the lead of the amazing Jim Lee. He accessorized their outfits with awesome brown leather bomber jackets and trench coats (*ahem* Rogue and Gambit). The reboot was then used as the basis for the amazing animated series, which, of course, I completely devoured.
Our family didn’t have cable, and I had to manually manage the antenna during each episode so a clear image would come through. I taped the episodes on reused VHS tapes and rewatched them nonstop the whole weekend. All of this trouble because I wanted to be heroes like them. They were outsiders, which was exactly how I felt in school, the only Filipino girl in my class.
There was one X-Man I loved above all others. It was Jubilation Lee. And she was just like me—an Asian kid who didn’t really belong. I don’t even like the yellow color of her signature coat, but I cut out all of her pictures from my comic books and stuck them on my notebooks anyway. Because Jubilee was all I had. She was a hero. Not really in the world of X-Men, but to me, she was.
That’s why I know how important it is for the new generation of Asian-American kids to see themselves in media. Yes, there’s a new wave of Asian-American heroes out there, but Jubilee paved the way.
So I wanted to close this piece with an ode to my girl—
Jubilation Lee,
with your yellow trench coat, bright red shirt, and acid wash jean shorts,
you had the worst mutant powers—fireworks,
which were pretty but did absolutely nothing against taking down Magneto.
But you were by far my favorite X-Man.
Because through you, I could see myself as part of the team.
And for the first time, I saw me

Akemi Dawn Bowman, author of Summer Bird Blue

When I was younger, I thought feeling strongly about something meant standing by my opinions forever and ever. I thought being passionate meant never changing my mind.
It seemed logical to me—to look at a situation, come to a conclusion, and stand by the decision. That’s what strength is, right? That’s what it means to have conviction.
Or so I thought.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but what I was doing was putting myself into boxes. And the problem with boxes is there’s no room for ideas to move or grow or evolve.
Sure, some ideas belong in boxes. For example, I don’t personally like the texture of mushrooms. I hate the smell of shrimp. And I’m not at all a fan of people being mean to one another. These things will never change, and that’s okay.
But some ideas need space—and time—to grow.
I wish I hadn’t put so many of my thoughts in boxes. I wish I had allowed my beliefs more room to evolve. Because suddenly I was older, and all these big heavy ideas about my sexuality and romantic orientation and mental health and how to be a good person—well, they’d outgrown those boxes.
And I realized it’s because I’d outgrown them, too.
Sometimes it’s hard when we believe so passionately about something, because we think we have to hold onto those beliefs until the end of time. We trick ourselves into thinking change is a bad thing—that change means we did something wrong.
If I could tell my younger self one thing, it would be this: You don’t have to fit into anyone’s box, even if it’s one you created yourself. You’re allowed to grow. You’re allowed to change your mind.
Strength is not the same thing as stubbornness. It’s about giving yourself room to grow, and being brave enough to recognize when you’ve outgrown an idea.
Some ideas are fluid. You are not the same person you were yesterday.
And that’s okay.
You’re doing okay.
So take a breath, listen to your heart, and keep growing.

Whiti Hereaka, author of Legacy

I have a thing about names. It comes from having a name that trips people up; it’s misheard: Vicki, or misspelled: White, or mistaken for another name entirely: Whetu. I grew up explaining it — where it comes from, and what it means. The meaning is always difficult to explain. My name can be a noun, verb, transient verb; but the meaning my family preferred was “shining”. Lately, I prefer “stanza” or “paragraph.”
Recently, we adopted a new cat. In my household the cat picks their name. It’s a way to make the new member of the family welcome: by addressing them by the name they most respond to, the name they identify with.
The first cat to name herself was Mog. Then we adopted Pickles, who didn’t have a name at the shelter, just a number. And now the cat called “Arthur”—who does not answer to Arthur, who seems to hate the name Arthur—will choose his own name.
When I write, I spend a lot of time searching for the perfect name for a character—something that encapsulates their personality, and the journey that they’re on. I’m interested in how a name shapes identity: in my previous novels I’ve written characters who’ve changed their name or go by nicknames.
Identity is at the heart of my new novel, Legacy. Riki struggles with the pressure of living up to his name—he’s the namesake of his great-great-grandfather: Te Ariki, a veteran of WWI. Can Riki ever escape the shadow cast by Te Ariki and make a name for himself? Does his name actually define who he is and his future? Who is Riki without Te Ariki?
“Arthur” doesn’t respond to any of the names on our longlist. Finally, I ask him his name.
“Rwaaoph,” he says.
“Hello, Ralph.”

Jimmy Cajoleas, author of The Good Demon

My first job in high school was working at a record store—okay, technically a CD store—called Musiquarium.
Actually, that’s a lie. My first job was at a drive-through frozen custard place, but I got fired after one day, and I’m still not even sure why. So I’m going to skip the custard, okay? I want to talk about working at Musiquarium, because it changed my life.
I’ll never forget my first day, taking inventory of the stock.
“Take note of anything you don’t know,” said my boss, “anything you haven’t heard. And then learn about it. You can’t talk about anything you don’t know.”
Of course, this was before streaming or downloading or anything else. If you wanted to hear a song, you had to buy the CD and listen to it on your own. But at the record store, I had access to thousands of CDs, a library cobbled together from the owners’ personal collections. The owners were all jazz freaks, and they would send me home every night with a stack full of music to listen to, all brand-new to my ears, stuff from the 1930s onward. It was the best homework I ever had.
I loved all of our customers, I loved the owners, I loved my coworkers. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier in my life.
And then the internet happened, and CD sales plummeted, and Musiquarium became impossible to keep up. When the store closed, it broke my heart.
But Musiquarium wasn’t just my high school job. It was proof that there was more goodness and hope and beauty than I had ever imagined out there in the world, waiting for me, if I would only seek it out with all of my heart. It gave me a community of people who loved what I loved, who found value in the same things I found value in. Musiquarium taught me how to listen—I mean really listen—to music and to people, and my life has been ever richer since.

L.L. McKinney, author of A Blade So Black

“I think writing is a distraction for Leatrice.”
9th grade Elle was finishing up some homework while watching Toonami when my parents called me into the living room. I entered to find them wearing twin looks of concern. Mom told me to have a seat. Confused, and kinda scared, I lowered myself onto the couch.
“We just got a call from your English teacher.” Dad folded his fingers together. “She says you’re distracted in class.”
I practically broke my neck doing a double take. “What?”
Mom sighed. “She said, ‘I think writing is a distraction for Leatrice,’ and you’re focusing more on your stories than your schoolwork.”
My teacher wasn’t wrong, but I focused on my work enough for A’s. I just spent more time on my writing.
I couldn’t respond. My mind was busy combing over the past few weeks. I’d finished my assignments early, which I thought was the point. I used the extra time to work on my stories. For curious readers, most of them were Sailor Moon fanfiction, before I knew what fanfiction was.
Apparently, this bothered my teacher. I don’t know why. My grades weren’t suffering. I paid attention whenever she gave a lesson. I only ever wrote when my other work was finished. I worked faster than my peers, always had. It wasn’t a problem before, when I would read a book. Now I wrote.
“We think you should stop with the stories for a while,” Dad said quietly.
My mind was blown. My heart was broken.
I quit writing until college.
Thankfully the stories never stopped. They kept turning over in my mind, biding their time. My teacher attempted to bury that part of me, but it was a seed in my heart; waiting for the perfect opportunity to spring forth. Now I am a tree, planted by the water, rooted in my truth. I shall not be moved.

Courtney Summers, author of Sadie

I used to think you had to be pretty enough to wear makeup, so for a while, I only collected it. Red lipstick was a favorite—I’d sneak it onto my lips and wipe it off just as quickly because it felt like a secret I wasn’t supposed to have. Beautiful things were for beautiful people and I spent a lot of my life disliking myself. There’s a story there, but it’s so common I don’t need to tell it.
By the time I’d bought every Besame lipstick there was to buy, I could no longer justify the cost of having and the waste of not using, so I just decided I’d get good at makeup. I’ll never forget those first forays into the drugstore, trying to find the best foundation for my skin, the best eye shadow for my eyes, and not totally understanding primer but picking it up anyway. I felt ashamed at the register. I imagined the clerk thinking, this girl thinks she can look good?
At first, I only wanted to conceal my flaws—of which I felt there were many—and then, as I became somewhat proficient with product, I found there were parts of me I wanted to showcase, enhance, call attention to. Makeup was an art, and thinking of it that way enabled me to approach my face as a canvas, allowing me distance from the negative self-image I spent a lifetime cultivating. There’s a lot worth criticizing about the beauty industry, but for me, makeup opened a door to a more positive self-image. It forced me to look at myself in a way that gave me permission to like what I saw.
Now makeup has to be pretty enough for me to wear.

Miranda Asebedo, author of The Deepest Roots

This is the car I bought at seventeen. A 1972 Mach 1 Mustang. See what I’m wearing in the photo? That’s my Burger King uniform. I think I could still make a Whopper in my sleep. I endured some mean-spirited jabs at the uniform and the smell of French fries that followed me whenever I wore it. Not everyone I knew had a job in high school; many of them existed on the benevolence of their wealthier parents. But the teens I worked with also came from working-class families like mine, and they understood me. Some of them were working for a car, others nicer clothes, and a few even to help out their families financially.
Look at the car a little closer. Do you see the fresh coat of wax? The hours I spent cleaning dust and mouse poop out of the seats? I found the Mach in an alley. Disregarded, alone. Just waiting for someone to love it again. I bought it from a guy who was glad to get rid of it and make a little cash. I drove the Mach home, and from the moment I got behind the wheel, I knew anything was possible if I just worked hard enough. After all, I’d managed to turn burgers into horsepower.
Cars are part of your identity in my part of the world. I’m from rural Kansas, the heart of the flyover states. We take cars pretty seriously here, mostly because we spend so much time in them. When it’s a twenty-five-mile drive to the store to get a carton of milk, you get to know your car really well. The creaks and the groans. The little squeal it makes when the steering fluid’s getting low. While I was writing The Deepest Roots, my love for cars came out through the main character, Rome, who has the ability to Fix anything she touches and works part-time as a mechanic to help her mom pay the rent. Rome’s Mach is based on the car in the photograph.
What’s funny about this picture is everything you can’t see. My Mach, unlike Rome’s restored beauty, had a few character flaws. You can’t see it in the photograph, but on the other side, the front fender was all bent in and rusted. The passenger door wouldn’t budge at all, and the only way you could get the driver’s door open was to roll down the window and use the handle on the outside of the car. The air conditioning never worked, and the heater usually didn’t. Sometimes, despite the number of hours I spent working on the wiring, the headlights would flicker off when it started to rain.
But those flaws never mattered to me. All that counted was that I bought that car myself. And in it, I could soar on those rural county roads, dust billowing behind me. I didn’t get on a plane until I was much older, but I already knew what it felt like to fly.

Juleah del Rosario, author of 500 Words or Less

I thought I was smart until I took the PSATs, and my score told me otherwise.
For my entire school career leading up to that point I had straight As. I didn’t just think I was smart, I knew I was smart because my record spoke for itself.
But my PSAT score was below average. Not “below average” for an overachiever like myself—you know when you get an 87 on a test instead of a 98. But below the average high school student, and I was so not average.
The score got to me. It got in my head and I couldn’t walk away. Maybe I’m not as smart as I think I am. The narrative only perpetuated itself. I stopped working as hard. My grades began to slip.
For the rest of high school I begrudgingly sat through standardized test after standardized test. Of course I didn’t study. I didn’t want another test to tell me I was less than mediocre. So if I didn’t try, then it couldn’t be a fair assessment of my intelligence.
I know now that racial and gender bias exists in standardized tests; that the tests aren’t created for people like me to succeed. Maybe it would have helped to know this. Maybe I would have brushed off the crappy score and moved on.
But part of me knows it wasn’t the inherent bias of the test that was the problem. It was that these weren’t just tests to me. They were measures of my self-worth.
I had wrapped too much value in being validated as smart. I needed someone, something else to tell me about my own greatness.
Time and time again, I failed to learn how flawed this thinking could be, and continued to measure my self-worth on external validations and achievement. To win the next race, to get the next job, to land an agent, write a book, and be published!
Even now, as I’m on the verge of releasing my debut novel, something I have wanted so badly since those PSAT days, I constantly need to remind myself that life doesn’t happen in the accolades.
Life happens when you’re present enough to be you.

Sangu Mandanna, author of A Spark of White Fire

“We’re closed.”
The year was 2004, the setting a tiny pub in a tiny town called Sloup in the Czech Republic. I was sixteen. I was there with six of my friends from our school in India. Seven brown kids, huddled in coats we had never worn before because it never got this cold where we’d come from.
We’d been so excited because the legal drinking age there was sixteen. “Let’s go to the pub,” we’d said, like characters out of a British sitcom.
We walked in the door and the barman looked at us. “We’re closed,” he said.
They weren’t closed. We knew this because we could see old white Czech men sitting at their tables with their beers. We knew this because as we shuffled out, we bumped into a group of white German boys, who went in and ordered drinks. They came back outside to sit at a picnic table, saw us, and invited us to join them. One of them even went back inside to get drinks for us.
My friends and I never mentioned that moment again. Not then, not now. I remember it like it happened yesterday. I remember feeling small.
I’ve always wanted to write stories. I wrote my first when I was four years old. Stories are as much a part of me as my heart, liver or kidneys. After that night in Sloup, though, the stories changed.
Now I write stories about girls who discover their own worth. I write to remind myself that I’m not small. I am a titan. And I write for everyone else who needs to be reminded of that. No matter how many places are closed to you, you are not small. You’re a titan too.

Sara Farizan, author of Here to Stay

Sometimes I’m not sure what teenage me would make of present day me. I don’t have a time machine to figure out what she’d think, but some days I feel like I’m doing okay and other days I have no idea what I’m doing or what the future holds. On the one hand, she’d be pleased with the framed Gremlins poster on my wall, but also worry that maybe I was regressing? I guess if I were to speak to teenage me, this is what I’d say:
You don’t have to be a perfect, accommodating ambassador for people who want to know about your Persian culture. You might find some questions invasive or coming from people who don’t have your best interests at heart. Tell them to go kick rocks. Continue to be proud of who you are, but let yourself take a breath and be a kid. You don’t have all the answers they want to hear.
Yes, you do have a crush on her. It’s okay. Yes, you both have the same initials and it probably wouldn’t work out, but don’t feel bad about liking her. She’s dreamy. You have good taste.
Grownups don’t know everything. You were right about that.
The Celtics win another championship.
You’re the luckiest kid in the world to have the parents that you do. They love you so much and you never have to worry about that not being the case.
There will be another Batman movie WAY better than Batman & Robin some day. The franchise is not dead.
It’s okay to ask for things. You will have trouble doing this as an adult as well, but practice now so it gets easier.
Your third novel, Here to Stay, comes out soon. Yeah, you do get to be a writer! You did it, kid!

Janelle Milanes, author of Analee, in Real Life

My first anxiety attack happened at eight years old. My mom was late picking me up from school and I stood waiting at the entrance with my teacher and a dwindling number of my peers. As the minutes ticked by, the other kids talked and laughed with their friends, unconcerned that no one had come to take them home yet. I stood there in silent terror, more and more convinced that my mother had died in a horrific car crash.
“She’s just running late,” my teacher assured me.
I was too shy to argue. The fact was, my mom had never run late. If she was late that day, it meant something unspeakable happened. She was never coming to pick me up. Never ever again.
“Expect the worst” is a philosophy by which I have lived my entire life. When I have to fly on a plane, I am fairly certain it will crash. I don’t breathe normally until my feet touch the ground. On the rare occasion I can’t reach my husband on the phone, I don’t assume what’s likely: that his ringer is on silent. My mind whispers that he was run over by a car careening onto the sidewalk. I had a baby ten months ago, and I can only imagine the panic attacks to come. Somehow, I even manage to have anxiety about my future anxiety.
At my worst, I have a physical reaction to these thoughts. My pulse races, my stomach constricts, my body temperature soars.
There are many anxiety triggers coming for me in the next few months. My book is out soon. I will be flying to different cities and presenting myself as a well-adjusted person. Inside, I will be wrecked. There are a myriad of ways in which things can go wrong for me and my mind will catalog each and every one.
I can only breathe. Remind myself that these upcoming moments, both beautiful and anxiety-inducing, will pass. Everything in this life is temporary. And while that sucks for the good moments, it’s a gift when it comes to the bad ones.

Lucy Adlington, author of The Red Ribbon

I was going to write a piece about how fab my life is (and it pretty much is) but then I took a quick selfie in my writing room, in front of shelves of books and I thought, wow, what a lot of exciting worlds those pages contain. Except the books, and hundreds like them, have been my companions through intense and often wretched loneliness.
(Then I wondered, have I got lipstick on my teeth?)
And then I came back to the absolute life-saving nature of books and reading.
I had quite a solitary childhood. I was secretly full of life and hope and creativity. All this was caged by barriers of immense shyness and insecurity. Desperate to share ideas, I talked at top speed whenever I was in company and swallowed the words down when I was alone—which was often. I definitely remember learning to read—what a moment of magic that was! Reading turned loneliness into pleasant solitude, which is a very different state of being. Thanks to stories, I was alone in the company of infinite characters. I discovered worlds where I belonged, which could be refuges or playgrounds or battlefields.
As soon as I realised that I could make stories…well, that was just the start of a lifelong compulsion to dream, to scribble, to type, to rewrite; to agonize and fantasize, invent and indulge. I’ve only just realized that the characters in my books are often solitary to begin with. They understand loneliness, too…yet they reach out to make connections, much as an author connects with readers all round the world.
So yes, I do have a fab life, surrounded by colour and books and amazing people, but I’m glad I took this moment to honour the powerful hold loneliness can have on the soul…and the extraordinary camaraderie books can offer as an antidote.
–Written in York, England, September 2018…the day I submitted my latest novel manuscript

Sonya Sones, author of The Opposite of Innocent

Content warning: sexual abuse
When I was nine, a monster moved into our house. This wasn’t some figment of my overactive imagination. This was a real live monster. And he was a close friend of my parents.
Only one person in the house knew that this guy was a monster—my sixteen-year-old sister Diane. Soon after he moved in, he started sexually abusing her. He threatened that if she told anyone, he’d take all his money out of our family’s business and we’d go bankrupt. When I think about the terrible pressure Diane must have felt to let him keep doing those things to her, my heart shatters in my chest.
Three years later, my sister had the first of many breakdowns and was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. I’ve always wondered if her mental illness was brought on by the trauma of what this monster put her through.
My debut novel, Stop Pretending, is based on what happened the first time she was hospitalized. When I asked her for permission to share her story, Diane, who had become a librarian, was happy to grant it. She smiled and said, “A book like this could be used to open up discussions about mental illness in schools.” And as the emails and letters began pouring in from grateful readers, thanking us for making them feel less alone, Diane was positively delighted.
My new book, The Opposite of Innocent, is loosely based on those dark days when my sister was sixteen. Sadly, she passed away a few months ago, so she won’t be able to see how this retelling of her #MeToo story will affect its readers. But I’m hoping it will help prevent other young women from falling into the same trap she fell into so many years ago…when the monster moved into our house.

Amy Plum, author of Neverwake

Content warning: childhood violence
I had a violent childhood.
Those five words took me decades to say. Growing up in a fundamentalist religious family in Alabama, I didn’t realize that the Bible verses my dad quoted didn’t give him the right to beat me for a half hour or more every single day. They spanked us with wooden paddles at my religious school—I thought physical punishment was normal. I even wrote in my diary at twelve years old, “I’m going to call Social Services if my dad spanks me again without a reason.” That page is tear-stained, and it rips my heart to shreds when I see it. I honestly thought my father had a right to do what he did, as long as I had done something to “deserve it.”
It was years later that I finally came to terms with my childhood. By then, I thought it was too late to do anything. My mom had died. I had confronted my father about the beatings and other, worse, abuse he had inflicted on me, and he told my siblings I was having “false memories.” I told friends, and they gave me their sympathy. But it didn’t help that twelve-year-old who was still in pain.
My therapist convinced me to go to the police station in the town where I grew up and report the things my father had done. I flew halfway across the world to talk to the Birmingham police, and although the statute of limitations was long past, the horrified look on the officer’s face after he nudged me into giving him the details made the whole ordeal worthwhile.
I still didn’t feel finished, even after my father died and I knew he couldn’t hurt me anymore. So I wrote it into a book. In the Dreamfall series, I gave Cata, one of the characters, my childhood…but I twisted it. She told a high school counselor what was happening. She was removed from her home and moved in with a friend. I hadn’t dared to speak up at her age, but I gave Cata that courage. I let her save herself.
Following the #MeToo movement, it seems that people are finally finding the courage to speak out against past abusers. But I want you to know that it’s never too early. You don’t have to wait until years later. You can stop the violence while it is happening.
It might feel too scary. The first person you tell might not believe you. But you deserve safety and peace of mind regardless of your age and your relationship with your persecutor. You too deserve to tell your story.

Monica Sanz, author of Seventh Born

I’ve been thinking about the past a lot lately. For no particular reason, really—well, actually, I think because my release day for Seventh Born and the deadline for book 2 in the series were days apart, my brain was trying to revert to default mode to prevent overheating. Anyway, I got to thinking about my senior year of high school, when I decided I wanted to pursue an English major. I had just gotten a small scholarship because of an essay I’d written, so I was pumped and determined, thinking the scholarship was a sign saying you’re choosing right, Monica. But then I started getting the same speech from many adults: what are you going to do with an English major? There’s no money in that. Sadly, I listened and ended up getting a degree in Hospitality Management…and a bunch of debt. A few years and a couple of hospitality jobs I had no passion for later, I got married and had kids and ended up leaving the workforce for a while. In that time, I found my way back to writing, and today, I’m wrapping up my draft for my fourth published book. I’m beyond happy, but a part of me is kind of sad? I don’t think sad is even the right word, but I can’t think of the right one at the moment (yes, I promise, I’m an author). I guess I just wonder if I had chased my dream, would the journey have been shorter, easier? Would I feel more stable as a writer now? Would it have even made a difference? I don’t know. Maybe? But then I look at pictures like this one and it doesn’t matter. I don’t regret a thing. I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be, crazy and frazzled and living my dream.

Naomi Hughes, author of Afterimage

I’ve had OCD since I was thirteen. I didn’t realize it until I was almost thirty.
That lag—seventeen years—might seem like a long time. And it was. But as I found out when I researched (because I am the raven-iest of Ravenclaws and research is how we deal), seventeen years is the statistically average lag time between OCD’s onset and its official diagnosis.
We get our first symptoms. We worry that we’re “going crazy.” So we quietly, desperately try to manage, all the while believing we’re the only ones with this kind of weird stuff playing on a never-ending loop in our heads.
Or at least that’s how it was for me. And the biggest reason it took me so long to realize I had OCD (and panic disorder) was because I never saw anyone with those conditions. Not in real life, and not in anything I read or watched.
Oh, there were some “issue books” around when I was growing up, but I was more into sci-fi and fantasy. And yeah, there were some TV characters, but their OCD seemed so obvious, so clear-cut. It looked nothing like what I was going through.
Until one day I took a quiz online and discovered that my particular brand of “constant existential crisis” looked an awful lot like obsessive-compulsive disorder.
I got diagnosed. I got therapy. I got better, mostly. But I still wonder what would’ve happened if all that hadn’t taken seventeen years.
I don’t want my readers to wait that long. I want them to see themselves now, in whatever they might read. I want to give them OCD space pirates, anxious dragon slayers, panic-fighting sci-fi heroines.
I want my readers to recognize themselves, so they can understand—the way I wish I’d understood—that they are not alone.

Christopher Krovatin, author of Frequency

At age fourteen, I got my first tattoo—an eight-pointed Star of Chaos on my right shoulder. At the time, I thought this was the coolest. Never mind that I designed it using MS Paint, or that the grizzled artist at the closet-sized St. Marks Place parlor never even looked at my fake ID—I was a high school freshman with a tattoo. I was a badass.
This feeling lasted up until I started hanging out with folks with actual tattoos. I quickly realized my chaos star was dinky, a poor offering to the Gods of Metal. I had to get it covered up.
Four years later, now eighteen, I decide to do something about it. I find tattoo shop, approach the oi punk behind the counter. I show him my tattoo and describe my new idea—a huge Star of Chaos, all black, maybe with bulletbelts across it (I was listening to a lot of early Sepultura at the time).
The guy eyes me, and then says, “Look, man, if that’s what you want, I can do that. But you got that tattoo for a reason. Rather than try to cover it up, I’d just focus on what your next tattoo will be.”
I leave the parlor mortified—my tattoo was so awful that this guy didn’t even want to cover it up. But that night, thinking about it, I decide I’m never going to cover it up. Maybe it’s not perfect, but neither was I. Maybe it was a mistake, but it was my mistake.
Own your errors. They’re reminders of who you are, or were. Plan your improvements rather than always trying to go back and fix your mistakes.
And maybe wait until you’re eighteen to get that tattoo.

Mary Amato, author of Open Mic Night at Westminster Cemetery

The microphone is on and it’s your turn. You thought you’d feel a few butterflies in your stomach, but it’s more like a flock of pterodactyls. If you’ve ever signed up for an open mic, you know what I’m talking about. You bare your soul when you sing alone. People see the vulnerable you, the private you, the real you.
I loved writing songs, but the thought of a solo performance terrified me for years. If I made a mistake, the spotlight would be on me alone. I thought I could build courage by practicing. The problem was that I made mistakes every time I practiced. “Stay home,” the demon in my head said. “You’re just not good enough.” Then I heard an ancient story that gave me what I needed.
I learned the story from Tara Brach, a writer, psychologist, and Buddhist teacher, and it goes like this. The demon god Mara was known for bringing fears and doubts to the minds of his unfortunate targets; and so, whenever Mara would appear in the path of the Buddha, the Buddha’s loyal attendant Ananda would panic. “Mara is here! Mara is here!” Ananda would exclaim. But instead of worrying or hiding or running or fighting or pretending not to see the demon, the Buddha would turn toward Mara and says, “I see you, Mara. Come have tea.”
That story inspired me to sign up for my first solo open mic when I was in my early forties. As I stepped up to the mic, I imagined Mara in the audience. “Ha. You’re going to make a mistake,” Mara called out to me. “Yes, I will,” I said. “So, just sit back and have a cup of tea because I’m going to sing anyway.” And I did.

Alex London, author of Black Wings Beating

Lately, I’ve spent a lot of time waiting for my world to change.
I’ve got a new book coming out and my husband and I are expecting a baby any day now. It is amazing to me how little control I have over either of these things, and how much hope and fear and excitement I’m feeling around both of them.
Waiting for a new book to find its readers is an act of surrender to forces far outside my control. Because writing is how I pay the bills, I’ve got plenty of anxiety around the book launch and how its failure or success will impact my new family. But more than that, I’m thinking about what my fantasy novel about killer falcons and vicious bird cults has to say about the world my daughter is being born into.
The thing about birds of prey is that they’re violent as hell. Their talons tear and crush, their beaks break flesh and eviscerate prey. They have a well-earned reputation for death dealing, and falconers harness those talents to their own ends. But the skilled violence of a raptor can’t be harnessed until it’s tamed, and a raptor cannot be tamed by force. A raptor can only be tamed by intense patience and constant vigilance to the details of their lives—their moods and weights and diets and appetites. It takes gentleness to tame a raptor. In spite of their ferocity, they are terribly fragile, quick to fright, and unforgiving. A bird of prey that’s startled by or afraid of its tamer can simply fly away, never to return. To tame a bird of prey takes a deep commitment to a kind of love that will never be requited, at least not on the same terms it’s given. In the falconry based fantasy of Black Wings Beating, the path to power goes through these birds of prey, and the only way to tame them is with love.
I guess my new book is a kind of hope that my child will come to know a world where—even in its hardest moments—love will always be the source of her greatest power.