Caveat Emptor | For Ko-Fi

Caveat Emptor

“Caveat Emptor” is basically Latin for “Buyer Beware”. Long post, ahoy! All for Ko-Fi, woo.

I have available on my Ko-Fi a goal to go to South Korea so I can work on Soaring, my sci-fi/fantasy alternate history series. This series has been in the works since I came up with the idea when I worked in the Library of Congress in 2014. In that decade of time, I have been collecting all sort of information and data about world history to weave a cohesive story. I wrote about Soaring quite a bit here.

What is Soaring about? Currently it’s a bit hard to describe since the work isn’t written yet and it’s just a sprawl of research notes, character lines and arc. It is one of my few works where I do talk about race, racism and that’s the crux of the story but it certainly no The Hate U Give: Speculative Fiction Edition but I guess some may say it’s in the same vein of Ring Shout and Lovecraft Country but not quite. (Though, given the premises of both works (I haven’t seen/read them admittedly, outside of snippets floating on the internet), if you liked Ring Shout and Lovecraft Country, you may like Soaring, especially if you’re into broader world history.) I’ll try my best to describe, I usually do the blurbs and “sizzle”/promo/story info stuff after the work is written because the story is now in solid form. This is currently in reverse, blurb/info piece before story penned so expect some major bits missing (that you most likely won’t notice as of now but I see like shining lights):

Racism and prejudice is alive, more than alive, it shows in the form of ever-dangerous “ghosts” that are visible and invisible in how they move the world and the people in it. But within these ghosts are more than simple apparitions, they change depending on where in the world they came from. This was handled quietly by Nia, a young woman gifted with the task of undoing what has been done to her ancestors but also to the world itself. Nia is tasked with resetting the world but she had rather handle things in a silent way, living her life and figuring herself out along the way. It’s a bit against what she was tasked to do but she sincerely didn’t want any attention on herself or her task. She didn’t even ask for this ability, it was thrown upon her. The less eyes, the better. Until she was forced into the open using her ability on live camera, which created an international political firestorm.

Meanwhile, there is Celeste, daughter of archeologists who have never come home. No one will tell her why and every answer she’s gotten always sounded … off. From the university, from the colleagues she thought were her parents’ friends, everyone who should have known something. In effort to fight the feeling that she’s been orphaned and the last to know about it, she spends time with her friend Maddie, daughter an oil and tech maven who always makes sure his daughter has everything she could ever want, including the ability to chase after her every dreams and whims of fashion and vlogging her life. Celeste is welcomed with open arms. It’s not her home, not her family but they love her as if she has been part of them since birth. Long time friends, it’s the least Maddie felt she could do to make Celeste feel better and figure out what happened to her parents, two of the only very few Black academics of the history and archeology departments. Celeste is grateful but everything is hard, especially her hurting heart.

One day, upon going through her parent’s basement, Celeste discovers a pack of cards that looks old but new at the same time. She opened the book of cards and a particular star necklace appears on her neck and a special ring glove appears on her hand. Little does she know, these cards were more than plain cards, they’re magical. And she has no idea how to take it off. But she eventually learns they’re a key to her parents and what happened to them. And perhaps the weird apparitions she keeps seeing from time to time since she opened the book of cards.

Celeste thought she was the only one that could do something special until she sees Nia on television. The both had no idea that they soon would be embroiled with international issues and become what would be deemed “Supers”, governmental representatives of a nation. After Nia, every nation scoured their citizens and found Supers of their own, to stand on the same footing as the United States. Some are proud to be Supers of their nations, some were forced into it, some were in it for themselves and others simply had no other choice.

To prevent international squabble, the Supers program is overseen by the United Nations, which provides a homestay for the Supers, the Hotel. And thus the real story begins as these different supers around the world interact with each other and the world around them. Nia was only supposed to get rid of the ghosts but she learns through being a Super, this would be a group effort – and the world people may want peace but some in the world don’t. But the world must be reset, by any means necessary.

———————-

That’s the basic rundown, in all its spindly, sprawling, probably nonsensical half-glory. I left a lot out for the sake of length and the fact the work isn’t written yet. That’s what I’m mailing myself to South Korea for.

The work will be set between 2008/2009-2015 so that means it includes historical incidents that occurred during that time such as:

– Arab Spring
– Japanese tsunami
– Occupy Wall St.
– Olympics (Winter & Summer games)
– Black Lives Matter protests
– Korean Protests/Sewol
– Ukraine/Russia: 2014 Edition
– The creation of South Sudan
– Banking crisis
– Palestine/Israel
– Syria
– Ebola in Africa
– Swine flu & SARS in various nations
– Hong Kong Protests/Occupy Hong Kong
– Sunflower Protests in Taiwan
– First Black US president elected (duh, obvs)
– The rise of social media, the changing landscape of media
– The rise of Hallyu/K-pop

That’s just the Super Massive Short List. In my ten years of accruing research, I have learned that what has happened in the world? A LOT. And because none of these events are borne from a vacuum, that means I had to look up histories such as:

– Iranian Revolution
– Xinjiang, Uyghurs and the land itself
– Gwangju Massacre
– Rwanda
– Palestine/Israel
– American history – Told from the perspective of the People of Color, not the Colonists
– Western History – Told from the perspective of the People of Color, not the Colonizers
– Aboriginal history
– Holocaust and anti-Semitism in general
– Falun Gong
– anti-Blackness and White supremacy in global society – Western imperialism, in other words
– Queer lives around the world and throughout history
– Japanese-Korean history
– Vietnam, Agent Orange children
– Korean, North/South history
– Developing Nations debt (also known as Third World Country Debt)
– Abolition and the Civil Rights Movement
– Prejudice in what feels like every form evaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar
– Nanking Massacre
– Female Genital Mutilation
– Civil wars in Africa
– Atomic bombing of Japan
– Trans-Atlantic slave trade and modern human trafficking/modern day servitude
– White Terror/Taiwanese massacre
– China’s Cultural Revolution

Things like that. This is the super hyper short list, by the way. I already know I probably have listed some subjects that would have surefire blocked this book from ever being published in traditional routes – but I’m indie, so I do not have to care about that. All I have to worry about is trying to write a cohesive story that is hopefully entertaining and impactful.

By the way, this book series will not be wall-to-wall historical trauma. There will also be interesting and fun bits and silliness in the book – or else I would NOT want to write it. I just laid out that list above so you, the reader (and potential Ko-Fi donor ♥) would know what story your money would be going to. If it were some uwu or owo type story, I really wouldn’t present so much before it’s all written but some of these subject matters are probably upsetting to some and I do not feel like hearing any version of “I can’t believe I paid to support a story that has [whatever issue, pick any of the above] in it! I have been tricked! I have been hoodwinked! I have been bamboozled!” so here it is in black and white.

Yes, the content warning list is probably going to be bananas. Might as well be “Content Warning: World”

The thing is, is that these things happened. I can’t write a book about the world while ignoring the world itself. This isn’t The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. As much as I would love to turn a blind eye to, well, darn near everything that doesn’t sound awesome, especially to people of color, that’s just not my style. BIPoC people exist. Queer people exist. QBIPoC exist most definitely (Hewwo!). And they experience things. A lot of history based novels are really White or talks in a White-comforting/purposely blind kind of way. And super straight. Very hetero, much hegemonic, many not-wow.

Mind you, Soaring isn’t going to be “automatically White people are bad, PoC are good” kind of book since that’s not exactly how prejudice works. It’s all about the choices a person makes, the systems that are built and how much a person works within (and thus supports, knowingly or unknowingly) that system – or chose to be a wrench in that cog. One thing my research has shown is how complex this all can be. I mean, just stuff about Japan and Korea alone can be taxing, for example. Because that would include things like Japanese imperialism and how it affected surrounding nations like Korea, Indonesia, China and Vietnam. Yes, Korea has ample beef with Japan for a lot of messed up things – but the nuking of Japan by the US was not done to help Korea out, it was a separate thing that just so happened to help out Korea get released from Japanese control. And that says nothing about the role Japan and US played to divide Korea into two. And it also says nothing about all that happened in Vietnam thanks to Korean, American, Japanese, and Russian military issues and atrocities. And this is just one micro thing of focus in the book. Complex af, in other words.

My cute cat gif collection is A-1, by the way. It has to, I had to research all of this. And there were pictures and footage.

My characters are pretty much the span of that spectrum of choices, borne from the worlds they come from – but they’re also still people. That means they’ll have good times, bad times, and in between. Fall in love, have families, get married (this includes the queer folks also), just living lives but also dealing with the push and pulls of their nations and the rules and governments that all comes with.

Ooh! And here’s also a part that I have been thinking of saying for the longest time about this work:

I’m a Black American, queer, non-binary woman writer (I’ll get to that a little further down). This book is thus going to be written through the lens of a Black American, queer, female identity, even if I try to not do that. All books are written through the lens of the creator, plain and simple. This is no different. While I did the level best I could to bone up on my history and culture knowledge around the world, I’m not in the business of carrying water for other groups – something that seemingly is regularly expected out of Black people any and everywhere when any issue of oppression comes up. As if it is our job to march in the streets, be beaten by police, be oppressed and risk ourselves so the world can be a more equal place.

Nah, mayne. Not in the least. Carry your own water.

Black people aren’t “good at fighting for progress”, we do it simply because it’s the right thing to do. And others who are not Black can do it too. Yes, you might die a horrendous death that may be used as pointless news fodder for the 5 o’clock daily or viral shock footage in the process but that’s a risk to take. It isn’t ok to expect Black people to do it on your behalf. Period.

The point is, this is my story and while I’m going to try my best to tell it the best I can, there will be perspective and perhaps bias seeping in. For example, someone might be agitated that Falun Gong is getting mentioned (and a family of characters, and a storyline, and an arc). And that’s all well and fine, not everyone is going to like what I write, but I’m not going to blindly make it a propaganda piece going in either direction. People are people, plain and simple. If I have to sit through countless tomes and stories that spans centuries of fictional Black people being touted as speaker-pieces of Blackness when really they’re extremely harmful and viciously inaccurate anti-Black stereotypes created by White people and everyone who believed them all. Around. The World. as if law and utter gospel, y’all can sit through a Falun Gong character that just wants to be a regular guy that likes dance and music and helps out his grandmother while living in Australia as a Chinese-Australian family (that is not Half White or Any Parts White, just straight up Chinese diaspora living in Australia like anyone else) while trying to manage the fact he can shift and still time itself. Speaking as a Black person who has to literally consider shipping herself on the other side of the planet and isolate herself in an apartment for a quarter of a year in a different country just to avoid acts of anti-Blackness or prejudice that has been sown in the minds of others around the globe for decades and centuries (I have spoken to people in different countries that have never even met a Black person in their entire life but would come straight out the woodwork with really anti-Black behavior that they “have no idea how they learned it” when they spoke to me, a total stranger), this character I just described could have been handled and painted a lot worse. I have had to grow up with media that could and has gotten Black people murdered, beaten and lynched, rejected from jobs, banned from getting homes in decent places, called messed up names by total strangers and passerbys, and more. This all means that while I am not at all interested in carrying water for other groups, I’m still going to do my due diligence the best I can to not create harmful characters for the historically marginalized I do depict. Even when it might be a tightrope act. For example, my Israeli character, he’s historically marginalized in that he’s Jewish but I’m not going to erase my Palestinian character, who is also historically marginalized in part due to Israel (and the West). Intersection exists, y’all. That’s why I’ve been at this for roughly a decade by myself – so I can make people, not stereotypes.

By the way, you can also read books written by people of other different backgrounds. Think I’m going to fumble who knows what in Soaring? Good thing there’s a slew of diverse speculative fiction writers that exist, both indie and traditional. Read them. You should have been reading diversely before this anyways.

Let’s crack out the Wheel! Of! Power/Privilege!

Oh, the gorgeous colors! In the middle is where the privilege/power lives and further out is the marginalizations/other. I highlighted the parts I am, notice some do not stay neatly into pie slices.

Here’s where I am, I numbered them simply for ease of reference:

1. Post-Secondary: I indeed did go to college. It sucked but I went

2. Ability: I need glasses and, thanks to martial arts, a little body wear & tear but I’m not categorically physically disabled

3. Sexuality: I’m demisexual, which falls under the asexual spectrum. Woo.

4. Neuro-diversity: I have some but not a lot. At this point, I don’t even think I can even fake neuro-typical.

5. Mental Health: I have a laundry list of disorders but in that laundry list are two trauma disorders that are very good at making things quite precarious: C-PTSD & Dissociative Identity Disorder. I’m in treatment and have been for a while (hence why “mostly stable” is half shaded) but the US healthcare system is crap, double so for mental health, triple so if you’re not White and rich so that’s where the “vulnerable” comes in. My disorders can put me in a hospital but there’s very little promise I will get decent care there. And then there’s the fear from others about people with DID thanks to crappy media like Split, so their fear usually turns into me getting fired/treated poorly. My vulnerability comes from my disorder in part but particularly from others. Also, note I literally have DID and I write horror but my horror doesn’t use DID as a terror mechanism at all in any of my works? Keep that in mind the next time you read something written by someone who doesn’t have the disorder but still has a horror character with the disorder. It’s entirely doable, they just don’t want to do it or are really bad at being creative – or both. 

6. Body size: I’ve always had a body-ody-ody-ody, lol It’s a body, what do you expect? It holds organs and stuff.

7. Housing: I rent. I’m not even sure I want to own property, given how my grandparents and parents were pretty much duped and locked into really horrible neighborhoods thanks to red-lining, which started in my hometown, Baltimore, around 1910 … and is still very much around to this very day. I’ll probably AI a super White, Trump voter/Jan 6 type to do the digital face/voice finagling for me so I can get a decent place to live and reveal myself in the end, Tuxedo-mask style.

8. Wealth: I was raised poor and I’m still fairly there more often than not, the highest I’ve struck is lower middle class. Gotta love institutionalized poverty, structured prejudice and active disruptions to upward mobility.

9. Language: I’m a native English speaker. I can speak and understand 5+ languages (I’m lazy so I stopped counting after 5) but given how I’ve seen English pop up in some of the the most unlikeliest of places and how so many try to learn English to simply improve their lives (Hi, enforced Western Imperialism), it is unfortunately apparent that knowing English since birth is a leg-up in some ways in many parts of the world.

10. Gender: I already described myself earlier as a non-binary woman. If “non-binary woman” sounds like an oxymoron, it isn’t. Non-binary is a big spectrum and where I am on that spectrum: I simply think gender is a spectrum, not a binary. That’s it. I’m personally mildly attached to gender but I notice I lean fairly gender neutral. Demi-gender, in other words. So “non-binary woman” is apt and accurate here. Heck of a lot easier to say & type than “gender non-conforming woman”. That’s why I have both colored in. I’m not trans or intersex, just plain non-binary woman.

11. Citizenship: I’m a natural citizen of the nation I was born in, America. Thus, I am a regular, plain American citizen. (Any American who cares to disagree is more than free to go to IRS, tell them and pay all my taxes for me on top of theirs since they’re feeling so charitable and patriotic. Thx)

12. Skin colo[u]r: I’m Black. I’m medium brown shade (it’s winter) but I can become dark medium brown and darker, depending on how long I shove myself out into the sun. (Which I plan to do a lot in South Korea. I need sun. Lots of it. I’m at “wintery corpse pallor” here.)  

These are all that I am (as of this writing). Notice the intersections? That’s all playing their roles in ways I do and don’t know in the crafting of this book. I sure as heck am not a White guy so definitely don’t expect White Male Author bullsh#ttery. My book is not going to be the usual “If The Nazis Had Won” nonsense or “Don’t You Miss Owning People: The Sci-Fi Edition” that plagues a lot of alternate history works penned by them. I rather write something better and more humanizing.

This is long, I know, but I just want to make sure people know where I’m coming from as exact as possible. Given I am asking for money for this project, the fact it is a lot of money, and the subjects this project will cover, I rather make sure people know something of what I’m doing and not just simply say “Just go with me on this. Trust the viiiiiiibbbeeezzzz” and stick my hand out expecting a dollar.

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd I’m raising money because I don’t want some random government or group to go, “She’s a spy/agent/[whatever the f#ck they’ll come up with] for America/[random enemy I probably have never heard of].” It sounds grandiose but in my research, if there’s one thing I have noticed, some nation leaders need to find different jobs or get thicker skin when it comes to criticism. I’m ripping on my own country’s leaders (remember, I’m a Black American writer so don’t expect a lot of ‘America Rockz, Heck Yeah!’ Don’t expect any, actually), but other nations will cry a river and an ocean as they try to retrofit whatever I write to whatever they want to pump out. Even though I’m small, I’ve seen it happen, just from looking at their histories both recent and distant. A good example is The Satanic Verses by British-Iranian author Salman Rushdie. Published in 1988 and you might have never heard this of book before – but whoo wow, the Iranian government has had a tizzy about this book. And Rushdie still has to look over his shoulder about the book, he was recently stabbed on stage in New York over it. I doubt I’ll have the same experience but, most sincerely, you never know ¯\(°_o)/¯

Speaking of countries, why I’ll be in Korea and what I plan to be doing there. I wrote about it a bit in a previous post:

I’m going to South Korea because it’s a relatively quiet country in comparison to America and, hey, I’ve never been outside the nation before but still know 5+ languages, Korean included. I can lazy-read Korean, thankfully. And I have two friends there who I plan to live near so I have someone in the country to run to should things go very lop-sided.

Given the subject matter of the book, I kinda do not want to be in the US because I think a change of scenery would be a big help. And given I am writing a book with an international cast (of over 200, dear gods ;_;), I might as well be somewhere different in the world. It would be a step up from all the walking around travel channels and VR experiences (For example, I have the Swedish Parliament VR experience because I have Swedish characters and before Soaring, the most I knew about Sweden was Swedish Fish and Blindside, an amazing Swedish band. And I also need to kinda see how their governmental halls look). These channels and VR interactives are wildly helpful in immense ways when it comes to building visuals and settings but I just would rather go somewhere. Not exactly great to just experience the world through a screen. Or even remotely healthy, I imagine.  

As I said in the previous post on Soaring, I don’t plan on making it a Super Happy K-Pop Trip. Actually, I plan on staying in an apartment where I’m just going to write the same way I do here in America: isolated in my room with my fountain pen, and some ink for 14-18 hours every single day until the story is done. I’m taking 3-5 day breaks in between books to rejuvenate my hand and brain but that’s probably it.

I have 5 handbound journals for Soaring, roughly almost a 1000 narrow-lined pages altogether. Once a book is finished (the series may be 4-5 books), I do indeed plan on being out and about because I am, after all, in a foreign nation that I am relatively literate in for the first time in my life. And what shall I do? Go to the supermarket and avoid all tourist traps as much as possible. I will do some scenic sight seeing, of course, d’accord, but I mainly will be taking a break for my hand since I handwrite my books. I know my friends plan to kidnap me and force me to have fun against my own will – partly because my birthday (July 2) falls during this 3 month trip – but for the most part, I plan to stay indoors and write. I’m not much of a party person, which is a good thing. It’s not a common occurrence that I get to travel outside the nation, even just to write a book so I am planning to just write as much as I can.

Sounds easy? I wish. This means it will be 3 months that I won’t be working – I’m in libraries, a field that does not pay a lot – and that means risking job security because jobs that allow sabbaticals mainly exist in Europe, not America. This is the USA, they expect you to basically work to death. They want you to miss holidays and personal life events or you walk the employment plank but they also want to pay you so little that you have very little options. They want you to respect them like deities but they don’t even respect you enough to pay you fairly or well. I genuinely have no idea where the rest of the world got the idea that the streets are paved in gold here in the US. It’s a big risk but I really don’t have much option outside of “Don’t ever write this book, don’t ever leave the US for longer than a week, don’t do anything but work for the rest of your life for a job where you can wake up fired and they expect you to care more about them than they will ever about you.” That’s a messed up situation, plain and simple. I do plan to apply to grants that could help but those grants are pretty darn small. I’m not exactly living in a system that has ample rooms of padding for Black folks who were raised poor in America or I probably would have been in and out of the nation several times by now. My sister’s got to travel out the country and so did my mom but that’s because my sister joined the US military and my grandfather was part of the US military when my mom was a child – soooooooooooooooo, basically, be part of the US Military. I’m anti-war, thus that’s a solid hell no. It’s really disturbing that the only opportunity my immediate family (outside of my dad, who is from a different country) had to travel outside the US is to carry a gun onto someone else’s lands because how else were you going to get a job or go to college while Black and poor? I just want to write a book series, not break my values for a nation that doesn’t even value me.  

On top of that, I have disorders to worry about. Korea is not known for great mental health care. The disorder I mostly concern myself with is my Dissociative Identity Disorder. I rather isolate myself and focus on my work instead of run into any potential risks about my disorder, ableism, anti-Black flavored ableism or xenophobic-flavored ableism. My two friends know about my disorder and one has a background in psychology and that’s enough for me. I’m currently trying to get as much trauma treatment as I can now so I can go several months without it while in Korea – there’s no pill to fix DID, only intense trauma therapy – I’m not that interested in interacting with anyone in Korea that I did not already personally know before I came to the country because I do not feel like having anything or anyone throw me off my game, writing-wise. I’m not a walking life lesson, this is not the K-Drama “Heal Me Kill Me”. * I just want to be left alone and do my work. South Korea is super low trigger area for me and fairly calm from what I have seen and heard so far – way better than America. That’s a selling point to me.

I pretty much just want to be in a place to focus on my work that is low stress for me.

I plan to use AirBnB to pre-pay an apartment so when I am there, I do not have to worry about finances when I am there. That and airfare is also what I would like the funding to go to since those are the two priciest parts of the trip. With that, I can focus my finances to pay for rent and bills for my place back here in America. My most constant haunt I plan to be is at a supermarket if I have to go somewhere in S. Korea. A 24/7 sauna if I really need to decompress between books.

And that’s that for the Caveat Emptor! It’s long, I know but again, I’m asking for a lot so that means it’s important that I’m as thorough as possible. Especially since I’m going to be on radio silence for the most part while I’m in S. Korea. Just like any work I write, I’m on full do-not-disturb. Aside for emergencies and the between-book break, I’m very disconnected from the world.

Wait o’ sec! When will Soaring come out? If I all goes to plan, during the 2030s, maybe 2035 but not sure. It’s a big project so I’m not trying to rush it. The game plan is to have the entire work of Soaring to be written and transcribed into typed form by the time I’m back in America. After the work is transcribed, I usually do hand edits, which this work will probably need a couple pass throughs minimum. I explain my basic work cycle here. Plus, I have other works that are coming out between 2025 and 2035, depending on schedule. Since I’m indie, I have to pace things so I don’t burn myself or my pockets out. And this doesn’t even include the audiobook version, which I do hope to have multiple actors for. I’m indie, remember, all that requires time, money and due diligence. More money means it will be done faster but not overnight.

Noooooow, this is the actual end of the Caveat Emptor! Thanks for reading and I hope you will donate.

** “Heal Me Kill Me” was inaccurate af, by the way. The rich guy with DID would have gone to Sheppard Pratt’s trauma disorder program, not John Hopkins, where they do not believe DID even exists. And he would have had a terrible time, Sheppard Pratt trauma staff cannot understand Korean and that would have been the least of that guy’s concern. Trust me, I worked at Hopkins – and that’s a story and a half of its own – and went to Sheppard Pratt’s trauma disorder program for DID treatment.