❤️ I've got a few exciting announcements to make!🎉

1. If you're in the metro Detroit area of Michigan, I'd love to see you at the Brighton District Library author fair on Sunday, November 17th! I will be joining twelve other authors that day to sell books and sign your things (want me to sign your book? Definitely. Want me to sign your journal? Sure. I asked Chuck Palahniuk to do that for me once.) 🖋

2. In addition to my book, I'll have some lipstick, stickers, and other fun things too. You can buy those separately, or get one free with the purchase of a book! 💄

3. 🔥 This is the first time I'm announcing this, but if you're excited about the interactive novel Raising Women, then get excited for its expansion pack. Next summer I'll be releasing a collection of short stories; each story will feature a woman from Raising Women, giving you more insight into their pasts and futures! I am telling you this because I'll have free copies of chapbooks with a few stories from that collection that you can take. 📖

(Also, a reminder: the holidays are coming up. Come get some books for you and/or your family and friends and support local authors!) Let's gooooo. I'd love to chat with you!

If you're on Facebook, let the library know you're coming and respond to the invite here.

In a previous post, "5 Ways to Create Visceral Images in Writing," I briefly talk about my experience with synesthesia. I knew when I wrote about it though that I'd eventually want to dive into it more, and talk about how it impacts the things I make. I'm going to get really nerdy now about how I experience synesthesia, and how I use it to make mix CDs.

Synesthesia is when someone experiences one of their senses through another (like tasting colors or seeing sounds). I have grapheme-color synesthesia. This is when someone associates a color with a symbol such as letters and/or numbers. For example, the letter e is a dark, navy blue for me. The number one is a very pale yellow, close to white. The name Justin is a blue (although can sometimes be a green depending on last name). I don’t know why these things are what they are, they just are (and the colors associated may be different for different people). I also have chromesthesia where I see colors when I hear sounds. I have minds-eye synesthesia though. This means that I only know the colors when I think about them; I don't actually see rooms full of colors when I hear or read things. Experiencing words and sounds with colors though does impact the words I choose when writing, or the songs I put on my mixes.
 
I’ve noticed that my synesthesia affects the things I read and write. I find that I especially love books or stories or poems that use words with strong colors, and when all of the words in the piece tend to lean toward a cohesive color scheme (like the story tends to use words with colors that create a black, red, and silver color scheme or a variety of navies and purples). This probably isn’t anything the writer’s thinking about when they do it, and even if they were thinking about it, they probably weren’t writing words that fit the same colors I see, BUT when it works for me, it really works for me.
 
In this post though, I'm going to focus more on my chromesthesia, and how I use it to make (really great) mix CDs.

Listen, I'm eighty years old and I don't have a smart phone, still use an iPod, and still listen to CDs. I also still make mixes (CDs, not to be confused with drinks), and I take great pride in the craft that goes into them. I'm going to clarify how I define a mix though because I consider mixes to be different than playlists.

Playlist - A playlist is a bunch of songs grouped together so they can be listened to at the same time. They can follow the same theme, they can just be what someone's into at the time, whatever. There's no rhyme or reason as to which songs get added to a playlist.
Mix - A mix is an art. A mix is very intentional, and songs on the mix are put on there because they convey a certain meaning. Additionally, mixes flow. I want listeners to finish a mix of mine and understand that it was a curated, seamless piece.
And I will clarify, a mix doesn't have to be on a CD - it's about the songs on it, the order they're in, etc. It's about the process of putting it together, not the format the songs are in/on.
 
My mixes, at minimum, take hours, although usually they take weeks, and often can take months to finish. It is a lot of work deciding on the songs that work thematically, and use sounds that work together. This is where my chromesthesia comes in. It's especially helpful paying attention to the songs' colors because the colors identify if the songs will flow from one to another. Like, it's really hard for me to feel confident about a mix that has bright red songs, sky blue songs, purple songs, and yellow songs. Don't get me wrong - usually, any one song has a few colors going on it, BUT there's a general color or vibe that it has, and the majority (if not all) of the other songs need to have overlapping color similarities in them for me to feel good about the mix.

Here's a mix I feel very confident in:
We Are Here
1. Just Saying - Jamie xx
2. Mind on Fire - Aisha Badru
3. She Burns - Foy Vance
4. First Day of My Life - Bright Eyes
5. Honey - Sir Sly
6. Meet Me At Our Spot - THE ANXIETY, WILLOW, Tyler Cole
7. Can't Help Falling Love (cover) - Twenty One Pilots
8. Sparks - Fleurie
9. Crystaline - JOME
10. Carry You - Novo Amor
11. Seaside - Haux
12. Just Saying - Jamie xx

We start with Jamie xx's "Just Saying" which has a dark feel to it - it's black with some dark greens and other-color highlights. It feels like a night in the forest. This transitions into "Mind on Fire" which is similarly breathy and dark - a perfect transition. It feels like they were meant to go together. The ending paces well into "She Burns." "She Burns" is a different color though - a light blue and light brown. It woks okay though because of the easy transition between the two, and because that brown isn't too far off from the black in the previous song. Now that "She Burns" has lightened the colors up a little, it makes it easier to move into the next Bright Eyes song, which is a yellow and brown. These browns feel a little classic, which is different than the moody breathy beginning, but the color changes (from darker to lighter) work with the lyric changes (as the lyrics in each song get more hopeful). Bright Eyes moves into Sir Sly's "Honey" which brings us back to some black shades, but also some yellow (which transitions nicely from First Day's browns and yellows). This song ends with some bright colors splashed on blacks and moves into "Meet Me At Our Spot" which has pops of bright colors. Our acoustic Twenty One Pilot's cover is then a brown and yellow shade, which helps the pops of yellow from the previous song transition. We're back to some darker hues in "Sparks", but again - those pops of brighter colors. That seems to be a large connector through most of these songs. "Crystalline" is a little more colorful. There are some subtle pinks and purples in it, but there is still an underlying shade of brown/black. "Carry You" is lighter. It's a light blue, but it has silver and yellow highlights in it. This moves into "Seaside" which is a beautiful light blue and silver. It's breathy though. We then end back with "Just Saying" which, isn't the same color, but breathy still.

I feel really good about this mix because many songs have primarily black bases, with pops of colors that are then mirrored in other songs without black bases. Many of the songs have an airy, breathy element to them, and we flow nicely between tempos.

Beside considering colors, I also have to consider pacing. You can't have too many slow songs in a row, or fast songs with competing beats. I also always make sure that I include a few songs that I knew the person I'm making the mix for likes. This is so, in case they don't know songs on the mix and start to zone out, I can bring them back in with things they like. I typically make sure song 3-ish is a song I know the person likes, and then another few spread throughout. I try to keep my mixes between 12-14 songs.

So to sum up, when I make mixes, I consider:

• Lyrics & the overall message/theme
• Songs the listener knows/likes
• Song colors
• Pacing/tempo

The worst is when there's a song that's perfect in meaning but you have to cut it because sound-wise it just. doesn't. work. Ugh. RIP to some songs that got cut for the betterment of the mix as a whole (although when I do this, the mix is usually a knockout after. It just sucks. I spend hours trying to find where to put it in the mix so it will work, and then I kill it anyway).

This is why making a mix is a very in-depth process (for me, anyway), and very different from a playlist (of which I have many! I listen to a lot of playlists at the gym where I just have songs on them that I want to listen to). My mixes are an art and, like I said, take up to months to finish. It's so satisfying to finish one though that hits just right and flows perfect. Not all of them are perfect. Sometimes I settle on a song or two that isn't hitting how it needs to, but I can't figure out what to replace it with. They can't all be knockouts I guess. Haha.
 
Anyway, this probably sounds wild, BUT I swear it’s a thing, and it’s an element of how I, personally, find writing and music that feel concise. In the near future, I'll be sharing the mix I made for Raising Women. It incorporates both plot elements and vibes and does so with some beautiful color transitions. If you've gotten to this point in me rambling about the weird colors I "see", then you might appreciate my mix for the book a little more.

Keep an eye out!

I don't typically do film reviews, but I'll make an exception for Thirteen (2003).

I had never seen this movie before (as it goes with me and most movies... Hah. I'm a book reader.) but when my friend Lindee and I went on a walk one day, she suggested I check it out. She told me it sounded similar to Raising Women, so I went home that night, bought it, and watched it. She was right.

Thirteen follows Tracy (Evan Rachel Wood), a thirteen year old dealing with her alcoholic mom, mom's addict boyfriend, distant father,  and trying to fit in. Then to make things more challenging upon starting the new school year, she notices everyone loves Evie, a girl who dresses hot, seems unconcerned with school, and into risky behavior. A girl very different from her. The girls get closer and escalate their risky behavior: sneaking out, hanging out with groups of boys into their own rough behaviors, and trying to seduce a man who's over eighteen. The girls start taking different kinds of drugs and piercing themselves. Additionally, Tracy cuts herself throughout the film as the pressure of feeling misunderstood grows. The visuals often feel intentionally casually shot, and the colors change as toxic behaviors and suspense increase.

While plot similarities between Thirteen and Raising Women exist (like self-destructive behavior and the desire to belong among other things), Lindee was more specifically comparing the two texts' audiences when she said this film and my book were alike.

On the surface, Thirteen may seem like it's targeted at teens. The plot primarily follows these thirteen-year-olds and the challenging experiences they have. Similarly, Raising Women may seem like it's Young Adult (and early conversations have shown that this is what some people identify it as just based on the blurb). Like Thirteen, Raising Women's main character is a teen going through her experiences in present day. Arguably though, these assessments are wrong.

There are subtle details that nod toward why teens are not the intended audiences. Regarding Thirteen, film critic Roger Ebert says, "Who is this movie for? Not for most 13-year-olds, that's for sure. The R rating is richly deserved, no matter how much of a lark the poster promises." Sure, the main characters are teens dealing with stuff teens may deal with, but the R rating wouldn't have allowed teens to see it in theaters - so they couldn't have been the intended audience. One of the things that helps this film lean away from a teen audience is Tracy's mother, Mel. While the movie doesn't focus on Mel's experiences like the girls', there are enough scenes that show the struggle she has with handling Tracy's behavior that make Mel an also important character, and for viewers to understand her perspective of her daughter's behavior. This supports the argument that instead of targeting teens, the film is aimed at adults, specifically women, who can commiserate with all of these characters and the various stages (teen girl, mother, friend) they are going through. This isn't to say that teens don't identify with this film (according to Lindee, it became sort of a cult classic that teens watched after the film came out on tape). It's just not the intended audience. Hardwick co-wrote it with fourteen-year-old Nikki Reed, but brought her own adult perspective to it.

Raising Women has similar audience overlaps. The Professional Writing Academy says, "First up, YA isn’t a genre: it’s an age range. YA fiction is aimed at a target audience aged 12-18." They then go on to list typical characteristics for YA, and most of them happen in Raising Women, BUT Raising Women's target audience isn't 12-18. Sure, teens can read this (I was reading Fight Club, Invisible Monsters, and Lolita in high school), but I wrote it for adults. More specifically, I guess you could say "unhinged millennial women"... hah. My intended audience is women who knew the girls in this book. These women like dark psychological stories. These women read coming of age tales, especially ones that aren't aimed at teens. I mean, first, Raising Women is set in the 90s/2000s, and it's not that teens can't read books set in different time periods, but as a contemporary fiction piece, setting a realistic fiction piece a few decades ago isn't trying hard to connect with them. Additionally, the primary characters outside of "you" (a teen) are both adults. The themes in this book are ones that women who have already grown up would identify with. The women I wrote this for are already pre-ordering this book. Sure, teens can read it, but I didn't write this for teens. I wrote it for women who want to feel like they're reading something real, and feel like they see themselves in that real thing they just read.

If you loved Thirteen, than you'll also love Raising Women. Both of these stories follow girls who feel lost and left behind, and nudged into figuring things out. Reader Xavier said, "The whole story has followed You creating an identity as a woman amidst an infinity of mixed signals and potential dangers, an these lines really take that to a deeper level by pointing at the fact that this is not exclusive to You." This is meant to make readers feel connected, but moreso the women who used to be the girls that got left behind and had to figure out how to be a women amidst an infinity of mixed signals. This is their story, just like I think Thirteen is the story for women trying to figure out how to be an adult that raises those girls.

Raising Women says, "Adults are supposed to know it all. They’re supposed to have all the answers, but no one ever gave them the answers. Who was the first adult? Who’s the one to have known it all?"

Preorder Raising Women here

Are you interested in receiving an ARC eBook of Raising Women?? Sign up using this form now! You'll hear back at the beginning of the week of September 16. The book will be provided through NetGalley and will be available for a month.

📖 RAISING WOMEN:
🖋 Self-destructive decisions
🖋 Girls destroying girls
🖋 Womanhood
🖋 Reality (and when the lines blur)
🖋 Queerness
🖋 Interactive fiction