2020 in review: january, february, march, march, march, march, march, april, mayjunejulyaugustseptemberoctober, november 1, november 2, november 3, november 3 part 2, november 3 part 3, november 3 partÂ
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pixel skylines

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ellievsbear
art blog(derogatory)
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izzy's playlists!

oozey mess
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@corinneduyvis
2020 in review: january, february, march, march, march, march, march, april, mayjunejulyaugustseptemberoctober, november 1, november 2, november 3, november 3 part 2, november 3 part 3, november 3 partÂ

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Hazel Stanczak from The Art of Saving the World is questioning asexual!
Author here to pitch in: she's also homoromantic đ
(And there's way more information on my website if this piqued your interest!)
Hiii... I love On the Edge of Gone so. much. and I haven't even finished it yet. It reads like I think, and I've never found that anywhere before. You're awesome. Also, you probably get a million notes a day, so feel free to ignore me if you want/need to (I can only imagine how overwhelm can get when you're published) but... how do you ever get a book DONE? Between executive dysfunction and life in general, I'm rarely able to do it. I'm kinda desperate at this point.
Thank you so much for reading the book and sharing those thoughts with me. It really is fantastic to hear <3
So ⌠I feel you on this question. I struggle with a lot of this, as well. At the same time, my situation is a lot easier than most peopleâs: I donât have a partner or kids, I donât have a dayjob, and I donât have school. In other words, I have very few obligations outside of writing. The moment I have more on my mind than usual, my productivity plummets.
Mostly, what I try to do is keep writing at the forefront of my mind. Iâll keep a notebook on me at all times to scribble thoughts into; Iâll be playing the bookâs soundtrack on nonstop loop; when Iâm showering or falling asleep or doing dishes, Iâll consciously steer my thoughts toward the book. The more I think about it, the more the book takes shape in my mind, and the more excited I am to get back to work on it. Keeping excitement levels high is really important for my productivity.
(ADHD is great like that. If I donât want to do it, my brain wonât let me do it, so I kind of have to trick my brain into wanting to do it even when I feel intimidated or exhausted or annoyed with the book.)
Another important point for me is to purposefully minimize the number of barriers to getting things done. For example, executive dysfunction + hyperfocus means I often skip meals. The executive dysfunction because I think of all the steps I need to take to make a meal (pause my work, get up from chair, determine what I want to eat, gather the ingredients, etc. etc.) and my brain goes ânah thoughâ), and the hyperfocus because Iâll be so caught up in whatever Iâm doing - whether itâs writing or researching insurance or comparing card sleeves - that time passes in bizarre ways and suddenly itâs midnight how did that happen wtf.
To navigate the meal issue, I do two things:
(1) I make food easy. Iâll make a huge amount of dinner so I can spend almost all week just slapping food on a plate and microwaving it, instead of needing to worry about figuring out what I want to eat, whatâs available, etc. Ditto for lunch and breakfast. This level of preparation cuts out so many steps, and makes it much easier to convince myself to get up and grab a plate.
(2) I go âscrew you, brainâ and set alarms. Right now Iâve got this obnoxious alarm on my phone that wonât shut up until Iâm physically in the kitchen taking a photo of the paintings on my wall from a certain angle. Then, once Iâm in the kitchen, Iâve already gotten past a lot of the barriers that were holding me up, so itâs much easier to simply walk to the fridge and grab food.
I take a similar approach with writing. I try to make it easy:
When drafting, I outline extensively. When I know pretty much exactly whatâs going to happen in the next scene, I can get right to work, rather than staring at a blank page going âuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.â
I donât often procrastinate on the outlining, since itâs a lot of fun. Even when Iâm feeling âmehâ about it, I can tell myself, âLook, this is the easy part. You wonât even have to write. Donât even open the manuscript. Just poke at that outline for a while and youâll feel so productive! Life hack!â
I use Cold Turkey on my PC, which lets me block my browser. That cuts out like 95% of procrastination. Itâs possible to set up a weekly schedule, meaning itâll automatically go into effect every day between, say 8:30AM and 12:30PM, effectively blocking off that chunk of time for writing.
Iâll use Forest on my phone, so that I donât grab that when Iâm distracted. (I donât want to kill the tree, omg.) I may also put my phone across the room. (Another thing that helps here: I have a separate notification tone for emails from my agent/editors/etc., so I know that even if the notification light is blinking, I wonât need to go âOH GOD WHAT IF XYZ WORK-RELATED THING??â)
On occasion, Iâve used this automatic workflow thing where every day at a certain time, my computer forcibly quit (and blocked) my browser and started up Word and Scrivener. When youâre merrily Tumblring and suddenly your computer goes âWTF GO WRITE WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, HERE, LOOK, I EVEN PLACED YOUR CURSOR IN THE RIGHT SPOTâ itâs really hard to then take the active step to close it again and procrastinate some more.
Whenever I have the thought of, âOh Iâll do that later, let me just do ABC first âŚâ I try to pause. This applies to everything I try to procrastinate on, from email to showering. I pause and give it ten seconds before I take any actions. In those ten seconds, I consider three things:
(1) whether ABC can wait for the few minutes itâll take me to get this task done.
(2) how painless itâll actually be once I just sit down and do it - often, itâll be easier than I thought.
(3) how much better Iâll feel once I have it done.
It doesnât always work, but it does help a lot of the time in just going âoh fuckit fine, Iâll just do it now, whatever.â
I let myself fall behind. I canât hide in the book 24/7. But experience has taught me that the more distractions I have to deal with, the harder it is for me to stay immersed in the book and stay productive, so sometimes, email and vacuuming and all that jazz are going to have to wait. Letting myself off the hook helps me focus on the book without beat myself up over all the things Iâm not doing.
I track my word count obsessively. If I get a lot done - progress is motivating! If I get very little done - well, thereâs nowhere to go but up! Even writing 100 words now would be an improvement!
Itâs very easy to get caught up in something and then just not get around to writing. In part because of how itâll always take ten times longer than you thought, in part because itâs easy to fall down the procrastination well, in part because once you start doing thing A, itâs harder to switch to thing B. Thus, I try to stick to this rule: writing comes first. This will be my routine:
Gentle alarm wakes me up. I screw around on my phone. This helps me wake up, it means I know I didnât miss anything hugely important last night, and it lets me quickly take care of anything that might need my immediate attention.
Loud obnoxious alarm goes off a little later. Since this is across the room, I have to get out of bed to turn it off. Ugh, okay. Standing now.
Bathroom! Hygiene! Clothes!
Feed the cat. (You may not have a cat. In that case, this part is pretty optional.)
Donât make a beeline for the computer. Donât go âoh Iâll just do this tiny thing firstââ Nope. Go to the kitchen. Make breakfast. Sit down at the bar, put my phone away (this is important), and eat. Iâll either let my brain relax for a bit and think of nothing in particular, or Iâll grab my plot notebook and mull over what Iâm doing next. Make a Plan Of Action.
Start up my PC. Run the blocker on both computer and phone straightaway. Get to work.
Take breaks, but make sure I set an alarm so the breaks wonât last three hours.
Mid-afternoon, I get to call it quits. Unless I want to keep writing, in which case, whoooo productivity!
Screw around the rest of the afternoon. Answer email, let myself waste time on pointless things, do random tasks that need doing. Maybe housework?? Social activities? Groceries? Idk!!
Take the evening off. Thatâs couch time. Cat, tea, TV/book. Try to put phone away - itâs too easy to keep scrolling instead of focusing on TV/book, which both means Iâm not actually letting my brain rest, and means itâs too easy to keep going until late into the night.
Put on a podcast or music and spend half an hour going around the house tidying, feeding the cat again, etc. Try to fix up the easy things so the house wonât be a complete mess when I wake up, since thatâs both distracting and demotivating.
Go to bed at halfway decent hour. Ponder the book again as Iâm falling asleep.
Rinse, repeat.
A lot of the above is rewiring my thinking. A lot of this is punching my brain. A lot of this still doesnât always work. And your life is probably hugely different from mine. But hereâs how I do it, and maybe thereâs useful nuggets in here for you.
Good luck. Itâs hard, but itâs possible. And once itâs done, no one gives a damn how it got done or how long it took. :)
I posted this a few years ago and just stumbled on it again. Have to say: I really needed to read this. My executive dysfunction has been out of control lately, and nearly all of the above habits have gone straight out the window.
I'm going to try to build them up again, bit by bit. As Tumblr is my witness.
[Image description: Seven books are side by side over a rainbow flag, with each book matching one of the stripesâ colors. The text says âQueer young adult novels releasing September 15, 2020.â The book titles are listed below.]
September 15th was an extremely queer day for young adult literature. Weâve got:
Even If We Break by Marieke Nijkamp - âA shocking new thriller about a group of friends who go to a cabin to play a murder mystery game ⌠only to have the game turned against them.â Each Of Us A Desert by Mark Oshiro - "A powerful coming-of-age fantasy novel about finding home and falling in love amidst the dangers of a desert where stories come to life.â Surrender Your Sons by Adam Sass - âConnor Major is heading to conversion therapy. But he isnât leaving until he takes the whole place down.â The Art of Saving the World by Corinne Duyvis - "Hazel Stanczak, her AU doppelgangers, and their grouchy lady dragon mentor try to stop the end of the world.â Legendborn by Tracy Deonn - "Tracy Deonnâs YA contemporary fantasy Legendborn offers the dark allure of City of Bones with a modern-day twist on a classic legend and a lot of Southern Black Girl Magic.â Who I Was With Her by Nita Tyndall - "How do you grieve your girlfriend ⌠when you kept your relationship a secret?â The Scapegracers by Hannah Abigail Clarke - âAn outcast teenage lesbian witch finds her coven hidden amongst the popular girls in her school, and performs some seriously badass magic in the process.â
(Full disclosure: Iâm the author of The Art of Saving the World, and the links are affiliate links, meaning I get a small commission if you click through and make a purchase. Every purchase from Bookshop also supports independent bookstores.)
Hi! Iâm interested in your books, but I donât want to buy a book without reading a sample first. Is there anywhere online I could read a few pages of one of your books?
Entirely understandable! Here you go:
Otherbound: first chapter on my website (scroll down and click âexcerptâ), first 3 and a half chapters on Amazon
On the Edge of Gone: first chapter on my website, first 5 and a half chapters on Amazon
The Art of Saving the World:Â prologue and first 6 and a half chapters on Amazon
Guardians of the Galaxy: Collect Them All: first chapter (and a half) on Amazon
On Amazon, you can use the âread insideâ feature - make sure to view the Kindle version, as there are pages omitted from the preview of the print version.
Hope this helps you make your decision! :)

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[Image description: Seven books are side by side over a rainbow flag, with each book matching one of the stripesâ colors. The text says âQueer young adult novels releasing September 15, 2020.â The book titles are listed below.]
September 15th was an extremely queer day for young adult literature. Weâve got:
Even If We Break by Marieke Nijkamp - "A shocking new thriller about a group of friends who go to a cabin to play a murder mystery game ... only to have the game turned against them.â Each Of Us A Desert by Mark Oshiro - "A powerful coming-of-age fantasy novel about finding home and falling in love amidst the dangers of a desert where stories come to life.â Surrender Your Sons by Adam Sass - âConnor Major is heading to conversion therapy. But he isnât leaving until he takes the whole place down.â The Art of Saving the World by Corinne Duyvis - "Hazel Stanczak, her AU doppelgangers, and their grouchy lady dragon mentor try to stop the end of the world.â Legendborn by Tracy Deonn - "Tracy Deonnâs YA contemporary fantasy Legendborn offers the dark allure of City of Bones with a modern-day twist on a classic legend and a lot of Southern Black Girl Magic.â Who I Was With Her by Nita Tyndall - "How do you grieve your girlfriend ... when you kept your relationship a secret?â The Scapegracers by Hannah Abigail Clarke - âAn outcast teenage lesbian witch finds her coven hidden amongst the popular girls in her school, and performs some seriously badass magic in the process.â
(Full disclosure: Iâm the author of The Art of Saving the World, and the links are affiliate links, meaning I get a small commission if you click through and make a purchase. Every purchase from Bookshop also supports independent bookstores.)
adhd is: telling yourself â alright time to get startedâ every 30 minutes and continuing to not move
Me: well time to get started
Goblin brain: it is isnât it? Good on you for recognizing that!
Me: well thank you
Me: *stays seated*
The narrative of âthis person was disabled but their disability was cured as part of their storyâ is ableist
The narrative of âthis person is disabled but âovercameâ disability in order for them to be a heroâ (e.g. a paralysed person finding a way to walk) is ableist
And just for clarification for the non-disabled, using adaptive technologies, like prostheses or whatever, is not ableist as long as you never forget. Ask yourself questions about the benefits but also the limitations of whatever adaptive thing youâre giving the character.
They have to take a pill every day to treat a chronic illness or chronic pain? Okay, what happens when they forget, or are in a bad situation and run out of pills?
They lost a limb or are paralyzed and now they have a sci-fi cybernetic prosthesis/exoskeleton to replace the lost functionality? Cool. What does maintenance look like? Does it ever malfunction? What happens if they donât or canât take care of it? Do they still get phantom pains even with the adaptation?
Theyâre deaf or blind or anosmic, but theyâre a wizard who uses magic to adapt to the lost sense? Fine. What does it take to maintain that magic? Do they have adaptive strategies for when the magic fails?
Theyâre autistic or have ADHD or schizophrenia or some other cognitive disorder, and they have a chip in their head to make it easier to communicate when non-verbal? Okay. What exactly does it do for them? Does it ever malfunction or give them headaches? What are other ways theyâve adapted to their disability apart from this chip?
Other questions to ask that go for all kinds of things:
Do they have a service animal? For what tasks or situations is it trained?
Do their family/friends know how to help if their adaptive technologies/strategies fail?
Is their disability (or the adaptation) visible or observable to others? How do others react?
Has their society adapted to accommodate disabilities, and if so, in what ways? (Ramps, closed captions, sign language, etc.)
Basically, think about what it adds to the story to have your character disabled. If you were just going to completely cure it with no ongoing repercussions or adaptations, why did you bother making them disabled in the first place? What story were you telling?
really good addition
A few years ago I wrote an indepth blog post about this - written by writers, for writers, and talking about all kinds of situations, pitfalls, and possible solutions.Â
It can feel awfully convenient when a disabled character just happens to have a unique supernatural or magical power that effectively negates their disability. ... As a readerâespecially as a disabled readerâit often grates to see a power seemingly chosen purely to dodge the practical difficulties of writing and integrating a characterâs disability.
Check out â(Not) Engaging with Disability: Convenient Approaches in SFFâ on Disability in Kidlit.
ROOT MAGIC is a middle grade historical fantasy set in 1960s South Carolina. The book is about twins learning rootwork & finding their place in the world. This tale is full of Gullah Geechee tradition and folklore. Written by Gullah Geechee native Eden Royce and publishes Jan 2021
Edited to add (we got tons of DMs for this)
Amazon Link for more info:
https://amzn.to/3kswpNk
HKR Bookshop Store Link for more info:
https://bookshop.org/a/6778/9780062899576

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She had gone from having no choices to having too many. What did you do when life wasnât just choosing the lesser evil? What did you do when you were the only one to decide where to walk, what to say? She didnât know where to start.
Otherbound (by Corinne Duyvis)
mlem mlem mlem mlem
(via)
COVER REVEAL! BROKEN WEB, sequel to FOREST OF SOULS, hits shelves 6.15.21!
Huge thanks to Fairyloot for hosting the reveal + INT giveaway! Enter at https://instagram.com/p/CFwzQK1pGwE/ - Ends 10/5.
Art by the amazing Charlie Bowater and design by Laura Benton.
NOW AVAILABLE FOR PREORDER: https://lorimlee.com/brokenweb/
aaaaaaa itâs so pretty!!!!
[image description: a tweet by user @indigenousAI saying
"fun fact: as a DV survivor i cannot register to vote because doing so makes my address public. anyone who is fleeing or hiding from an abuser is automatically disenfranchised from the political process and this is a feature, not a bug"]
I donât know of the original poster might not be aware
but!
if youâve been a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking, you can enroll into the address confidentiality program (free of cost!) and be registered to vote as an absentee voter and your name and address will not be made available for the public
it is super easy to get enrolled - the application takes like 5 minutes, but it has to be with someone who is certified to do it (most likely an advocate! try going to a family justice center in your area or calling the Attorney Generals office in your area!!!!)
ALSO :Â
you donât need to have any police reports or have a protection order to qualify!!! you just have to sign stating that youâve been a victim of one of the aforementioned crimes.
Links to the info for every state in the Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_confidentiality_program
Address confidentiality program - Wikipedia
My latest novel is out! Itâs a YA fantasy titled The Art of Saving the World and itâs got all of the following and more:
questioning asexual lesbian protagonist
who finds out sheâs the ~Chosen One~
except the Powers That Be have no faith that sheâll succeed in actually saving the world
loophole!! they send in several AU versions of her as backup
who are also all queer
and dealing with some flavor of anxiety!
and endometriosis in some cases
how do you even cope with seeing AU versions of yourself when youâre self-conscious as hell
âoh my god do I really bite my lip that much oh GOD does my laugh sound like that????â
âif one useless Hazel canât save the world how are SEVERAL useless Hazels supposed to do it jfcâ
thereâs a grouchy lady dragon mentor
a Mysterious Government Agency
and an out-of-control interdimensional rift
as one review mag says:Â âtakes the standard chosen-one plot formula and tips it on its head, then wrings whatâs left for all the angst and existential crises itâs worthâ which is PRETTY ACCURATE
and also the author (thatâd be me) is queer and disabled and has cats to feed
This book came out in September 2020 and it got pretty badly hit by the coronavirus crisis in terms of marketing/promo, so ngl, Iâm kinda worried about its sales, and Iâm seriously hoping word of mouth will be able to save the day. So if any of this appeals to you:Â
please share this post/spread the word!
please pick up the book from a library or bookstore!
thaaanks <3
hey y'all??? This book is so good??? It has so much to say about identify and anxiety and the ways we see ourselves when its literally not ourselves.. and also how much braver we can be than we think we can I had such a good time y'all Iâm still not over the ending either

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Because treating people fairly often means treating them differently.
This is something that I teach my students during the first week of school and they understand it. Eight year olds can understand this and all it costs is a box of band-aids.
I have each students pretend they got hurt and need a band-aid. Children love band-aids. I ask the first one where they are hurt. If he says his finger, I put the band-aid on his finger. Then I ask the second one where they are hurt. No matter what that child says, I put the band-aid on their finger exactly like the first child. I keep doing that through the whole class. No matter where they say their pretend injury is, I do the same thing I did with the first one.
After they all have band-aids in the same spot, I ask if that actually helped any of them other than the first child. I say, âWell, I helped all of you the same! You all have one band-aid!â And theyâll try to get me to understand that they were hurt somewhere else. I act like Iâm just now understanding it. Then I explain, âThere might be moments this year where some of you get different things because you need them differently, just like you needed a band-aid in a different spot.âÂ
If at any time any of my students ask why one student has a different assignment, or gets taken out of the class for a subject, or gets another teacher to come in and help them throughout the year, I remind my students of the band-aids they got at the start of the school year and they stop complaining. Thatâs why eight year olds can understand equity.Â
I remember reading somewhere once âwe should be speaking of equity instead of equalityâ and that is a principle that applies here me thinks
I will reblog this every time it shows up on my dash, because, frankly, the world cannot get enough reminders.
My latest novel is out! Itâs a YA fantasy titled The Art of Saving the World and itâs got all of the following and more:
questioning asexual lesbian protagonist
who finds out sheâs the ~Chosen One~
except the Powers That Be have no faith that sheâll succeed in actually saving the world
loophole!! they send in several AU versions of her as backup
who are also all queer
and dealing with some flavor of anxiety!
and endometriosis in some cases
how do you even cope with seeing AU versions of yourself when youâre self-conscious as hell
âoh my god do I really bite my lip that much oh GOD does my laugh sound like that????â
âif one useless Hazel canât save the world how are SEVERAL useless Hazels supposed to do it jfcâ
thereâs a grouchy lady dragon mentor
a Mysterious Government Agency
and an out-of-control interdimensional rift
as one review mag says:Â âtakes the standard chosen-one plot formula and tips it on its head, then wrings whatâs left for all the angst and existential crises itâs worthâ which is PRETTY ACCURATE
and also the author (thatâd be me) is queer and disabled and has cats to feed
This book came out in September 2020 and it got pretty badly hit by the coronavirus crisis in terms of marketing/promo, so ngl, Iâm kinda worried about its sales, and Iâm seriously hoping word of mouth will be able to save the day. So if any of this appeals to you:Â
please share this post/spread the word!
please pick up the book from a library or bookstore!
thaaanks <3
Iâve read On the Edge of Gone by this author and it was absolutely amazing, so I will be getting a copy of this new one.