The Phase 4 Podcast is a podcast hosted by JP as an intersection of What We Focus on Expands, and Your Story is your Superpower. This podcast explores coaches and creatives and insightful things they have to share. Among other things, he talks with guests about personal growth, evolution, expansion, transformation, and more. On his show, he explores where guests have came from, where they currently are, and where they are going. All that being said, I had a great time talking with JP about my new book, Raising Women, and about my writing process, and how I got to where I am with it.

As summarized by JP, "In this captivating episode of the Phase 4 Podcast, we welcome award-winning writer and educator Shannon Waite to the podcast. Shannon is the author of Raising Women, an interactive and innovative transgressive fiction novel that invites readers to determine how the story unfolds, immersing them in the wild and often turbulent journey of growing up as a girl. Her stories breach societal norms, the characters who dare to defy them, and the wounds that shape our shared humanity. With two bachelor’s degrees in English and Creative Writing and an MA in Teaching and Curriculum, Shannon brings a unique perspective to storytelling and education. We discuss how her work challenges readers to confront uncomfortable truths and explore their own narratives. Shannon also shares insights into her teaching journey, inspiring the next generation of creative thinkers and writers. Whether you’re passionate about contemporary and transgressive literature, curious about the power of interactive storytelling, or simply looking for inspiration to challenge norms, this episode is one you won’t want to miss."

If you're curious to know more about interactive novels and the behind the scenes of me writing one, then you should definitely check out this episode, Breaking Norms and Raising Women with Author Shannon Waite on The Phase 4 Podcast!
 (or check it out anyway. I enjoy talking about the nerdy things I love).

Are you in a book club?
Does your book club read dark and gritty things (addiction, coming of age, queer, etc.)?
Do you like talking about social norms, breaking them, and all the things that go with that?

Then Raising Women is the book for you!

Raising Women is an interactive novel in which readers have twenty-four possible pathways with four unique endings to explore the wild that is growing up girl. Readers get to choose the decisions that are made and face the consequences that follow. Depending on what you choose, you may taste blood, get branded with a searing screw driver, or date a married man – all while each choice challenges what it means to be a woman, real, or both.

By merging literary fiction and interactive fiction, Raising Women is a one of its kind. Get all the messy girl/unhinged women, coming of age, contemporary lit fic, transgressive fiction, and interactive fiction vibes in one book that allows you to read it over and over in new ways. Readers say: "Capturing the magic and madness of girlhood within each little novella, Raising Women has a story for everyone," "The novel is an unapologetic deep dive into the complexities of girlhood and womanhood, all while giving you the power to shape the story’s outcome. The narrative does a fantastic job of capturing the confusion, rebellion, and desire for belonging that defines coming of age, especially as a young woman," and "I’m now heavily doubting all the times I’ve shunned the use of second-person narrative because this was incredible!"

If this sounds interesting to your book club,
How do you feel about books with with no book club prep work (like, the questions and supporting materials are already done for you)?
Then download the Raising Women Book Club Kit.
This kit includes:

• A book synopsis
• An author letter and bio
• 16 discussion questions to provoke interpretations of Raising Women
• 10 character analysis questions each for Roman, Evan, and you
• Links to more downloadable Raising Women fun

And if you're planning on reading Raising Women with your club, reach out to me! I'm happy to answer questions you might have, or join in. If you live in the metro Detroit/south eastern Michigan area, we can plan an in-person date, or if you are located outside that space, I'm happy to coordinate something virtual. I'm honored you're considering this book as an adventure for your group to read, and don't doubt that there are many things to talk about (some of which are highlighted for you in the provided book club kit).

Download the Raising Women book club kit here (and check out the Raising Women site for other free downloads).

Happy reading!

❤️ For those of you in the Detroit area, I'll be selling and signing at another public library event in November! I recently posted my attendance with the Brighton District Library on November 17th, but now I'll be participating in the Troy Public Library author event on November 16th as well. 🎉

1. In case Troy is closer to you than Brighton, I'd love to see you at the Troy Public Library's author fair on Saturday, November 16th! I will be joining a group of 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, Raising Women cootie catchers, and other fun things too. You can buy those separately, or get one free with the purchase of a book (although the cootie catchers will be free)! 💄

3. 🔥 I announced this with my last signing announcement, but if you're excited about the interactive novel Raising Women, then get excited for its expansion pack. This summer I'll be releasing an "expansion pack" for Raising Women - it will be a collection of short stories that focus on each of the women as individuals, including both prequels and sequels! 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!

The library will also be giving everyone a passport. If you get enough stamps from authors, you'll get to enter it into a raffle! If you're interested, you do need to let the library know you're coming by registering here. Please come! I'd love to see you there.

🎉 TODAY IS THE DAY! The wait is finally over - Raising Women by Shannon Waite is available in ebook and paperback from most book retailers NOW. Enjoy destroying your life 😉

I am so incredibly grateful that I have been able to write and share this story. I've put so much of myself into this one, and I genuinely love it. I appreciate everyone who has already read it and hyped it up. ❤️ The book went live today, and having so many people waiting for the book and just overall excited has melted my heart.

Already, too, Raising Women has jumped to a #1 New Release. While it falls into many categories, having it rise to the top quickly in one of them is exciting.

This book is undeniably candid in how it mirrors the hoops girls jump through to bargain their place in society, illuminating the desperate craving they have for belonging in a culture that is quick to cast them as pawns on a chessboard.

If you've had your eye on this book, this is your time to get it!
You can order it from most major book retailers above, or you can still purchase a signed copy (with stickers and a Polaroid) here.

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

I'm here to share with you the Raising Women book trailer.

We're getting so close - just over a month away.
Pre-order here!

And check out the Raising Women site for downloads and other things.

Video clips shot by the forever wonderful Lindee Robinson Photography.

I'm not sure what to think about I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman (translated by Ros Schwartz), but it's not entirely what I was expecting (based on the back cover and reviews). It wasn't bad... just, not what I thought. Like when you expect to drink water and then realize you took a sip of Sprite.

I loved the idea of these women being trapped in a cage for some unknown reason, with guards watching them for some unknown reason. And then they escaped, and you're like YES. There's going to be some action! And then there never is... Yes, it's desolate like some reviews say, but other than a very short scene or two, I didn't feel much, and I really wanted this book to make me feel (based on the concept it had). Most of the text was just a lot of wandering.

Critically, I can understand the purpose behind this book, and how if maybe I was to discuss this with others (which I will with my book club next month) I might appreciate certain aspects more. It brings up the idea of community, and how we become who we become, and what we are without those things. It makes you consider the point of life, especially if you are simply on your own with no community. It brings to light motives, and others' stories, and who are people if we don't know who they are? There are many thematic elements that this story brings to light that would be fascinating to discuss with people.

But reading it as it is and reflecting on it by myself, I was left... meh. Wanting more. As a story, it felt like much didn't happen. It isn't a long book, but I felt like Harpman could have written a short story about this and packed a far more powerful punch on these themes. And, to be fair, maybe that's part of the message - forcing readers to metaphorically wander with nothing to do, like the women in the book had to do, but I don't know. This book started off with so many riveting questions and really led me to believe there were going to be answers. I was excited to see what the reasons for the conflict were, but then we got nothing. I think I expected more transgression. In my blog post "What is Transgressive Fiction?" I summarize other author's definitions of the genre:

Palahniuk: Fiction that has characters who misbehave and commit crimes as political acts of civil disobedience.
D’Hont: Fiction that evolves and represents the sociopolitical shifts it explores.
Morrison: Fiction that analyzes the limits of the world.
While all of these definitions involve limits in some way, they still vary from each other. So I’ll look at a few more definitions…

I then go on to say, I think that all of those things, combined with writing techniques and contemporary trademarks (like unreliable narrators with conversational/dialectical tones, for example), are what make the stories that are most widely recognized as transgressive fiction earn that label.

With women endlessly trapped in a cage, watched over by male guards, I expected misbehaving and crimes. I expected gender norms and social commentary. I expected sociopolitics. I thought this book would be more transgressive, but instead it was a little more of a dystopia with no action. It did explore the limits of the world, and I think that is what reviewers who have given it a high rating are holding onto.


Read below if you want my thoughts that includes SPOILERS:
We never find out why the women get locked in a cage. Additionally, we find out that there are other camps set up exactly the same with the same number of women locked in them - then we find out there are also the same camps of men. Still, we never find out why any of these people had been locked up - what was the motive? (And honestly, I was disappointed when we found out there were camps of men too. I feel like the book's message would/could have been drastically different if it had just been women, but also men? And yet we never find out why they were there, what set off some alarms, what happened to everyone else in the world, and like... I get the message is kind of laid out to us at the end, but having these cages of men threw it off for me.) With the title being I Who Have Never Known Men, I thought the book was going to have something specific to say about men/gender, but now I wonder if it was referring to humans and not men? Because men had to deal with the same traumas of being in a post-apocalyptic world, and she decided they also didn't know what was going on. So what does it matter that she's a woman who never knew men? I thought there would be a cooler critique on society regarding that and there wasn't.

The writing is good, and I like the characters and how they are developed, and I like the ideas the book introduces. I would probably like this better if it was for a college class where we discussed it and built arguments about the piece, but as a book I was reading for fun, I wanted something more, and if not all the answers, at least one or two. Instead MC just lives trapped in a cage, escapes, wanders around never knowing community and then she dies. I guess not having this information is saying something, and I guess not having this information can lead us to come up with our own answers, but... meh.

Additionally, I didn't quite understand some details logistically. For example, these wandering women survived by eating food they found at all the other abandoned cage shelters, including meat. For 30+ years? Meat can't last that long, even frozen.

So three and a half? four? stars because it wasn't bad, and I liked the idea and all of that, but ... this could have been really cool and it felt like it was trying but didn't hit the mark. Like, Harpman didn't know the answers to this cool plot herself, so she just let the not answering anything at the end be some deeper meaning instead.

I love experimenting, and playing with different forms. Last year I decided I wanted to write a piece of literary fiction that incorporated an interactive fiction form (I'll blog more about writing in this way soon). Then this last December, I just dove in and decided to do it - I started writing Raising Women. It wasn't planned; I had just finished a fiction workshop for my fall semester and had another one in the winter semester and was in the middle of writing other things, but for two weeks I just decided to write this. I knocked out most of the first draft then, then revisited it a few months later to finish it. Many rounds of editing and revising later, and I'm extremely excited to reveal the cover and announce that Raising Women will be released on October 11th!   Learn more about it here. Look out for more blogs about how I wrote this, what I love about it, and other fun freebies that are coming soon.