And Now, Let Us Vote

Let's do this.

Last night, I filled out my voter registration and absentee ballot request forms. It was quick and easy, and if you live outside the US and haven't done it yet, you can do so at this website. It only took me ten minutes, and it's something we should all do.

One of my aunts asked me a couple months ago why I care so much about American politics, since I haven't lived there for my whole adult life. There's a long answer to that, and I'll get into it one day soon. But the short answer is this: First, the decisions that the American government makes affect people all over the world, including where I live; and Second, I want America to be a place that I can be proud to go home to one day. The fact that I care so much about American politics is part of the reason that I haven't lived there for my whole adult life, but I am still American. I am still of that place. I would still like to be able to call it home again.

This election, more than any other, is far too important to let ten minutes get in the way of your vote.

Have you registered yet?

Ruminations on Entitlement, Fan Culture, and Life in the 21st Century

I've seen this article about fandom and entitlement circulating on twitter, and after reading it and chewing on it for a day or two and digesting it for over a week, and after reading Maggie Stiefvater's essay on self-actualization and Classic Cars and listening to a bunch of audiobooks and watching the Olympics and taking in a whole lot of other media, I have a few thoughts.

These thoughts are primarily directed towards authors and writers and artists and creative people. If you're not one of those people, you might find this interesting anyway, but you probably won't. Either way, it's your time; invest it where you please, but consider this fair warning.

An author owes nothing to anyone, ever, except to tell a good story. And by "good story", I don't mean a happy story, or a story where everyone's favorite character gets the ending that everyone wants. Sometimes that happens, but sometimes, it's a better story if it doesn't happen.

Let me tell you a story.

A while back - it really doesn't matter when - I read a book. It doesn't matter which book. What matters is that it was a great book, and as with all great books, I found myself in its pages. Not the main character's pages, though. No - my story was not the story of fame and fortune and happy endings. Mine was the story of the sidekick who doesn't quite get there in the end. It remains to be seen whether or not this will end up being my story - I still have a pulse, so I've still got time - but when I read this particular book, that was my story, and I hadn't quite realized that truth until I saw it there, in black and white, a message from the author: This is you. This is what happens to people like you: you will leave behind not the mark that will change the world, but the smudge of a mosquito squished against the kitchen wall. Maybe. Maybe not even a smudge. Maybe less than that. Every story needs a good supporting character with a cautionary tale, and you, my dear, are it.

And I thought: This is me. Oh, shit.

Here's a thing that you and I both know: no-one wants to live through that storyline. We all live in hope that, despite our persistence in doing the same ordinary things every day, we will somehow break out of the ordinary and become extraordinary. We are all, as the saying goes, the heroes of our own stories, and we all want to live to see our inner heroes realized. We will be the ones, the narrative goes, who will fix this fucked up world we live in. The narrative is a lie. I understood, when I recognized myself in this C-list character who would never realize his inner hero, that I was not on the path that was going to lead to me realizing mine.

It was an awful feeling.

Here's another thing that I think maybe you know: readers often see books as representing the author's worldview. Sometimes they're right and sometimes they're wrong, but that's how readers see things. And readers idolize authors.

And in this stupid, screwed up world we live in, readers want to believe that their idols see the world the same way they do. I mean, think about it: we say that God created man in his image, but really, it was the other way around.

Reading that book was the beginning for me of a long, long time engaged in the act of self-reflection. I am still engaged in it. It is painful, and hard, and frightening to think that after almost four decades of doing Life, I have, quite possibly, been doing it wrong.

But - and I think you probably already know this, too - the self-reflection is the point of that book I read. Self-reflection is, I think, the point of books in general. For without self-reflection, how can we grow? How can we become better? And if we do not become better, how can we better the world around us?

Unfortunately, we do not live in an age of self-reflection.

This is the quandary: self-reflection is painful; we live in a society in which the overwhelming worldview is that pain is a thing to be avoided at all costs. We tell ourselves, and our children, that we can change the world. We want to believe that this is true. But personal growth takes effort. Achievement takes both effort and sacrifice. And yet we tell ourselves constantly that effort and sacrifice are too much to ask, and should not be necessary. Why work out every day for months when you can just get liposuction and have the whole thing done, recovery and all, in a couple of weeks? Kids staying up too late is no problem at all - instead of establishing a routine (which could take WEEKS, and deprives parents of their social life), just give them melatonin when you want them to get an early night. You want a book you can't afford? No need to save up - just download it for free. Even as we admire the Olympians, VISA runs an ad telling us that, really, we're winners anyway for picking the right credit card, and those athletes are just making life hard for themselves. And on, and on, and on. When we take this, and add the ease with which readers can communicate with authors online, and shake it all up with a dash of entitlement and a heaping spoonful of frustration, the inevitable result is a fan culture that feels not only entitled, but obliged to press upon creators.

How can Joe Blogs make his obligatory Difference To the World? How can he reconcile the command that has been handed down to him to improve upon what he has been given with the overwhelming cultural message that life is supposed to be easy?

Simple. He pesters the author. If you listen to him, GREAT - he has made a difference to the world! He can check that box. If you don't, well, he tried; it's not his fault. He'll just SHOUT LOUDER NEXT TIME.

The world is full of C-Listers. It always has been, and it always will be. From the mosquito to the mountain goat, the vast majority are destined to live out their lives quietly and pass on without notice. Most people are the definition of average, people who will not get a hero's ending - who chose wrong before they even knew they were making a choice and ended up gunned down by a false friend in a parking lot, stuck in a dead-end factory job, stuck with a dependent who will never be anything but a dependent, just plain stuck. People who find, when they put their classic car into Drive, that the engine has rusted out, and will cost more money to fix than they have available. Or maybe they realize, after driving their classic car in circles for a while, that they've been driving the wrong model. They thought, at the time they bought it, that it was the right model, but they were wrong, and now it is too late, because the purchase of this wrong car has led them to make other choices that further limit their car-driving options. Maybe they have too many kids to cram into the sporty two-seater that they now realize is their One True Classic Car, and while the Ford Edsel is nice, it's just not quite Right, but they only have the time and resources for one car, and while their kids might really enjoy the wild ride strapped to the roof of the two-seater, in the long run, that amounts to child abuse, so they stick with the Edsel, because even if it looks like a beached whale, at least it's reliable, even though maintaining it sucks up all of their time.

The world is full of people who are living lives that are "nice, but just not quite Right". They know it. They just don't know what to do about it, so they look for themselves in books and movies and TV shows and they look to see themselves getting that elusive happy ending, because if they can't get it in fiction, then where else are they supposed to get it? And they harass the creators of those books and movies and TV shows when they don't get that, because the ease of developing an online platform means that they have convinced themselves that they are all Special Snowflakes who Deserve To Be Heard.

Stephen Hawking said recently that it is urgent that humans figure out how to leave the Earth and colonize other planets, and his desperation echoes, on a larger scale, the desperation that lives in the hearts of ordinary men: the desperation that comes with the knowledge that if we do not make our mark in time, then when we die, all that we know and all that we are dies with us. All of humanity, ordinary and extraordinary, will one day disappear in a swirl of matter and anti-matter and we will be nothing but an unread footnote in the history of time. What a waste that would be of Stephen Hawking's amazing mind. And yet, it is inevitable.

All human beings struggle with this. We struggle to reconcile our need for recognition with the reality of obscurity in the grand scheme of things. Everyone just wants to know that a happy ending is possible. Very few people have any idea of how to go about finding it.

But you don't owe them that.

You just owe them a good story. You owe them the opportunity for self-reflection.

Whether they take that opportunity is up to them.

Holy Acknowledgement Surprise, Batman!

This week has been a tough one for me - getting up at 6am is taking its toll, and I slept through my alarm more often than not. I've loved my productive mornings, but making myself into a morning person when the sun doesn't rise for another two-to-three hours and it's cold (and dark and cold and AAGH and did I mention cold?) is hard work for me. I'm still enthusiastic about my projects, but I'm struggling to find the enthusiasm at 6 o'clock in the morning. Plus, there's Life Stuff, which I'm not going to get into.

And then I sat down to read a friend's book*, and got curious about who her editor is (because the book is awesome), and when I turned to the acknowledgements I saw this:

Holy patooties, fruities!

And then I jumped around like a maniac, because my name is in the acknowledgement section of someone's book, OH YEAH!!!!

Here's the thing about writing books.

It's hard. You're all alone, and you know it probably sucks, and you're struggling to fix it, and you don't know if you're making it better or worse. You finally get it to where you think it's shining like a shiny thing, and 99% of the industry people you send it to tell you that thanks, but they'll pass. It's HARD. And that's the way it has to be, because quality matters, but knowing that doesn't make it any easier. (It makes you more able to be a grown-up about it, though, which is important. Be a grown-up.)

And then you see your name in the acknowledgement section of a friend's book, and you remember that night months and months ago when you answered an email with exactly the right questions, and you remember what it was like to read those early pages, those treasured secret words, filled with hope and possibility.

You remember that you have allies. You remember that you are an ally to other people.

And you feel so freaking lucky to be able to participate in the magic of creating stories for young people.

I am so grateful that I get to do this. I work with some of the most awesome people in the world. We make magic together.

What made you feel lucky this week?

*The book is A POCKET FULL OF MURDER, by R.J. Anderson, and it is delightful. Perfect for the magic-and-mystery-loving 8-12 year-old in your life.

Accountability Count: Don't even ask when I got up; Worked on WIPs every day, YAY ME I GET COOKIES; language and music are suffering, but have been Filling the Well like crazy, so I feel okay about that. Also, NEW WEBSITE COMING SOON-ISH, watch this space.

Reading: Worlds of Ink and Shadow, by Lena Coakley, which I critiqued an early chapter of years ago and which is AMAZING and #1 on the Globe and Mail Juvenile Bestseller lists, YESYESYESYESYES! More on that next week.

Watching: Jersey Boys and The Good German

Goodbye, Starman

Today has been one of those days. The American Library Association made history by announcing that a picture book, LAST STOP ON MARKET STREET, had both won the Newbery and garnered a Caldecott Honor, and it was announced that David Bowie had passed away.

Stars were born, and a star died.

It happens every day, but I'm feeling it keenly on this cold January afternoon.

Taken at the "David Bowie Is…" exhibit at the AGO.

I can't remember the first time I heard a David Bowie track. I can't remember which track it was. It feels like he's always been there.

But I do remember a girl I used to look after. She lived in a house in Kentish Town, and she was eleven, and she was the biggest David Bowie freak I had ever met. She would dress up like him after school and belt out Life on Mars as if she had written it herself, and it was wonderful. Through his music and his artistry and weirdness and his sheer force of personality, he gave her a bit of his stardust. He gave a bit of it to all of us.

Goodbye, Starman.

Accountability Count: Up at 6 every day, except when I slept through my alarm this morning; one hour of writing or revision done every day; music done every other day; language not done at all, ACK; blogging done and edited, but password forgotten so can't post, DOUBLE ACK; social media time seems to be under control THANK HEAVEN FOR SMALL MIRACLES.

Reading: THE NEST, by Kenneth Oppel, illustrated by Jon Klassen

Watching: LABYRINTH. Of course.

New Year, New Rules

Morning motivation from my office.

I like that quote. It says so much about life: that if you want something, I mean really, REALLY want something, you've got to do the work to get it. And getting the thing and doing the work are basically the same thing.

So.

I decided I needed to set myself some rules for getting this thing that I want - publication with a major house, on a consistent basis, from now until forever.

New year, new rules.

The rules apply every day, even on Christmas. They are called Rules for a reason, folks.

Here are The Rules:

- up at 6am; NO EXCEPTIONS (I'm not gonna lie: this one sucks for me. I am SO not a morning person. But, hours! In a day! Limited! So, new wake-up time. I'll get used to it.)

- minimum one hour writing time; NO EXCEPTIONS (Also, blogging does not count as "writing time.")

- blogging once per week (I'm doing it now! YAY!)

- vlogging once per week (Vlogs will be mirrored here on the blog, to keep the blog ticking over more often than once weekly.)

- half an hour per day on a language (This is nothing to do with writing and everything to do with me wanting to be more Me and less Mom/Spouse/Homeschooler/Vegetable Grower/etc. Also, Spy. I want to be more Spy.)

- half an hour per day on an instrument (Same deal as the language thing.)

- one hour per day consuming media (Reading, critical TV or film watching, etc. You've gotta fill the well, folks.)

- social media for half an hour before 9am, and during The Kidlets' piano practice (Blogging counts!)

- accountability on the blog

That last one is important. I can't tell you how many times I've made a promise to myself, only to break it within a few weeks. It might not be this way for everybody, but for me, accountability is vital. It's what makes me ACTUALLY do what I say I'm going to do. So every time I post here, I'm going to tell you how I'm doing at the end of the post.

I guess you could call these resolutions, except that none of them are Great, Grand Plans or anything. They're just little changes I'm making to my day, every day. We'll see if it makes a difference.

How about you?

Accountability Count: Up today at 6am; Twitter, FB, and blogging done, cut off at 1/2 an hour; blog for the week done. And its only 8am! WOO-HOO!

Currently reading: THE MARVELS, by Brian Selznick. Halfway through, I give it an A+.

Currently watching: Wonderfalls.

De-LAAAAAAYS

You may have noticed that March 17th came and went with no fanfare from me. Which would be normal for most days, except that March 17th was supposed to be the day that my book, BITE INTO BLOODSUCKERS, came out.

Yeah.

My co-author Kari-Lynn Winters and I worked really hard on that book. Like, REALLY hard. I lost sleep more times than I care to admit. So did our editors, and the book designer, and everyone else. But unfortunately, things just didn't quite work out. There were layout things and cover things and all kinds of other things, and all the THINGS just took too long.

Sometimes, this happens.

Sometimes, despite everyone’s best efforts, things just don’t go to plan. It's nobody's fault. It's just the way things go.

It’s disappointing, but it’s okay.

I would rather have my name on a great book than a rushed book. I think this is important to remember, for creators everywhere. Producing stuff you're proud of is important.

SO, I’ve been told by my publisher that our new release date will be sometime in JUNE. Just in time to try out the fun activities in the book in the warm summer months! YAAAY! Mark your calendars!

And in the meantime, you can order BITE INTO BLOODSUCKERS on Amazon by clicking HERE.

Thanks for your support, and thanks for stopping by!

When You Wish Upon a Star...

I want to talk with you guys about wishes.

I’m not a particularly superstitious person. I don’t believe that the Universe is out to get anyone, or that the Universe is tilted in anyone’s favor. I do believe that we reap what we sow, but that’s more of an “if you put forward your best self and keep your goals in sight and don’t let the crappy things that happen to you stop you from trying, things will eventually work out in the positive” thing than a Karma or Juju thing.

(Notice that I acknowledge that crappy things happen. They happen to everybody. Nobody’s life is just magically free of crapitude.)

But I totally believe in making wishes.

I wish on everything: falling stars, the first star of the evening, fallen eyelashes, clementine rinds when you peel them off all in one piece, snowflakes…

I don’t make wishes because I think that making a wish alone is enough to make something happen. There’s no magic fairy dust that falls on you and changes your reality just because you wished for something. Wishing can’t change the lottery numbers as the machine is popping them out. It can’t make the rain stop, or the temperature go up by ten degrees.

But what wishing CAN do - what it DOES do - is keep you focused. It keeps you moving forward. It reminds you of what you want, so that when the opportunities come, you can take them. And it reminds yo to create opportunities when you can.

Also, it reminds you to keep working for what you want. Emphasis on WORKING. Because working is hard. The discipline is hard to maintain. You need to remind yourself what you’re giving up all this free time for.

Me? I wished for a long healthy life for my kids, which is partly in my (and their) control, and partly up to chance. And I wished to work with an agent. (For about 5 years - yeah. This wishing thing takes TIME.)

Right now, I'm wishing to make a book that is so awesome, people won't be able to help but read it. It might take a while, but I'm gonna keep working on it and wishing for it.

So: wishes. I make them.

What do you wish for?

New year, Same Old Me

Hey! It’s 2015! Happy New Year!

So, I never did the whole “Round-Up” thing - you know, Best Books of the Year, Best Movies of the Year, Best Board Games of the Year, Best Cute Pet Gifs of the Year. So many people do that already, and I don’t know about you, but I find those “Best Of” lists pretty overwhelming. Like I’m now obliged to read/watch/play everything, because those are The Best, but everyone’s list is different, so now I have a hundred books that I Must Read Now instead of ten. I didn’t want to add to an already crowded pool, you know?

But maybe you guys really want to know what my favorite reads and watches of the year were? I don’t know. If you’re interested, I can do one. Let me know in the comments.

As for 2015, I hope to do everything the same, but better. So there will be the same type of content here, but I’d like to do it more often. I’d like to get back to video blogging again, especially when it comes to book reviews and book-to-film reviews and the odd bit of nerdery. You can also look forward to more writing samples appearing here, since Chuck Wendig posts some pretty fun writing prompts and I plan to participate more often in those.

And, of course, more writing off the blog, which will lead to more news! Things are always in the works and moving forward, and I can’t talk about anything yet, but I hope to have good news in the world of writing and publishing soon, so watch this space. (Obviously, I have the launch of my first book to look forward to this year! Kari-Lynn and I are really excited to be bringing BITE INTO BLOODSUCKERS into the world, and you should keep your eyes peeled for GIVEAWAYS in the coming months. March can’t come fast enough! If it can’t come fast enough for you either, you can pre-order a copy of it on Amazon here, from Barnes and Noble here, or from Chapters here. NOTE: The Barnes and Noble site lists me as an illustrator. HAHAHA I wish. Sadly, I do not possess the kind of photographic skill that is required for that job. I am the co-author, though. They totally got that right.)

Overall, my motto for 2015 will be this: Plan for the future, but live in the now. You have this day. Make it a good one.

How about you? What are your plans for 2015?

Good For You Is Good Enough: On Chapter Books, "Reading Up", and Stressed Out Kids

I’ve been thinking a lot about Chapter Books lately. Actually, all books, ALL THE TIME, but since I wrote a Chapter Book that I’m querying and I read a lot of those books in particular, I think about them. And I think about the concept of “reading up”, and I think about stressed out kids.

I haven’t been at this writing gig forever, and I haven’t been a parent forever, so I don’t know everything. But I do know this:

There is a lot of talk, on the news and in magazines and in the media generally, about how we are currently raising a generation of stressed-out, high-anxiety kids.

At the same time, there is a lot of talk (usually in the same places, often within the same program or in the same magazine issue - the unintentional irony is amazing) about how to get our kids reading younger, how schools expect them to be reading at an earlier age, and about how to help your kid “get ahead” and start “reading at a higher grade level” than their enrolled grade, so they can “get ahead of their peers and get a head start on life”.

There are levels to the problem here. First, we have the whole expectation that EVERY CHILD will somehow be ahead of every other child in every area, which is ridiculous and unrealistic and also unnecessary. (America, in particular, has an especially bad case of what I like to call "First Place-itis", both on an individual level and also as a nation. Unless you have traveled, one could be excused, based on what we hear from the American Propaganda Machine, for thinking that other countries - the ones that are Developed Nations, but that aren't the Top Dog - lack basic things like central heating and flush toilets and traffic lights. Trust me, America - being Number Two or Number Five or Number Twelve really ISN'T the end of the world.)

But the other level to the problem is the whole idea of encouraging kids to consume media that was not intended for them. I wonder if the people who write the articles encouraging parents to get their kids to read Harry Potter at the age of five have actually read the books themselves. Because when I was five, reading about a kid being hunted by a bad guy and then (SPOILER ALERT!) burning the bad guy’s face off at the end would have freaked me the hell out.

I know that if you’re a parent reading this, or maybe even if you’re an author or a publisher reading this, you’re probably defending the whole “reading up” thing. This is understandable. Parents want success for their kids, and publishers want to stay in business. And maybe your 5-year-old kid really can handle watching a man’s face turn to ash and then slowly drop away from his still standing corpse. (I guess this is me coming out against the idea of showing your kid the movie to help them understand the book that was written for kids much older than they are. Because, DUDE: if you don’t think they’re ready to read it? The beauty of books is that the images to go with the words are formed based on that child’s experience. Movies? Not so much.) But given the frequency of reports that our kids are more stressed out than kids have ever been, it seems clear that maybe more of us are wrong about that than we think. Maybe some of the kids who seem to be “handling it” are actually freaking out inside.

ASIDE: No, I don’t think it’s good to “desensitize” our kids. I want violence to always be an abhorrent, shocking thing to my children. Because once they accept it, they are one step closer to practicing it.

It saddens me that, in search of books for their ten-year-old “voracious readers”, parents hand them books like The Hunger Games and Divergent and The Fault in Our Stars rather than handing them books like When You Reach Me and The Tale of Desperaux. Not because the first set of books aren’t good books - in fact, I think they’re AMAZING books. But they are books written for teenagers, with the interests of teenagers in mind. They’re books written with the understanding that the people who read them will be concerned with things like how governments can wield power responsibly and what that does and doesn’t look like, and whether smoking pot is as bad for them as their parents say it is, and whether they should have sex with their boyfriend or girlfriend this weekend. Whether they’re “ready”, and what being “ready” even feels like, anyway.

Is your ten-year-old thinking about that stuff?

I hear people in the publishing world say that kids should be able to read whatever they wish, and that they will put a book down if they aren’t ready for it. I don’t completely agree with that. Because you can never un-read something that you weren’t ready for.

I think a valid question here is: why do we bother writing “for children”? What are the distinctions between “chapter books” and “middle grade” and “young adult” for, if we are going to encourage people to flaunt them? Those labels are signposts, guys.

I do not advocate censorship. I do not advocate the banning of books, or the removal of books from libraries and school curricula. I DEFINITELY do not advocate the sanitizing of books. (My WiP is a YA about a school shooting. It’s not sanitized. But it’s a YA, and it’s not for ten-year-olds.)

I DO advocate parents taking an active role in choosing, with their children, what their children read, and I advocate parents talking about books with their kids. I advocate booksellers taking an interest in helping their customers find the right book for them, above pushing the latest blockbuster. (Independent bookstores are much better at this than major chains, I find.) Some young kids really are ready to read books written for older kids, because they are asking those questions at a younger age. Also, some books on the “teen” shelves really are great for older tweens to read, just as some books on the “tween” shelf are genuinely appealing to 7-8 year-olds. But those are the exceptions, and most of them probably are not.

I wish - I really, really WISH - that we who make the books and publish the books and sell the books could continue to be be a little smarter about and more considerate about emotional preparedness. I hope that we will continue to be more sensitive to the emotional needs of children.

I wish that we, as a society, as a culture, would place “emotional needs” higher up on the importance pyramid than “reads and does math at a higher grade level than the rest of his class”.

Little children need, above all else, to feel loved and safe. And while I have never been a great fan of the litany of formulaic, sappy chapter books about fairies and ponies and princesses and puppies - IVY & BEAN and CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS are much more to my taste than RAINBOW FAIRIES and PUPPY PLACE - it saddens me to see Chapter Books coming out that open with demons and angry monsters and danger. It saddens me deeply. Because I do not think that we serve our six-year-olds’ emotional needs well with these types of books.

I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Thanks for stopping by.

Book Review: We Were Liars, by E. Lockhart

Once in a while, a book comes along that is so honest, so true, so close to home, that it takes your breath away. This is one of those books.

Here's the publisher's copy:

A beautiful and distinguished family.
A private island.
A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy.
A group of four friends—the Liars—whose friendship turns destructive.
A revolution. An accident. A secret.
Lies upon lies.
True love.
The truth.

We Were Liars is a modern, sophisticated suspense novel from National Book Award finalist and Printz Award honoree E. Lockhart. 

Read it.
And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE.

(Okay, seriously - that last line? It's too cheesy. Whatever. The copy is not the book.)

On the surface, this is a book about a wealthy teenaged girl recovering from an accident, on a private island surrounded by her wealthy family. If you look deeper, this is still a book about a wealthy teenaged girl recovering from an accident, on a private island surrounded by her wealthy family. But it is also a book about what happens when money becomes one's sole purpose; about what happens when maintaining the illusion of perfection becomes more important than everything else; about what happens when we stop listening to each other, and stop trying to talk to one another. It is a book about the danger of lies. It is a book that reveals the truth.

I don't want to reveal anything about the plot in this review, so I'm going to stick to talking about narrative devices that I liked. The story is told in first person, from the perspective of Cadence, who has experienced selective amnesia ever since being found in the water off the beach on her family's island two years ago. She mostly uses a traditional prose format for her narrative, but occasionally she falls into free verse, and I like that. It feels like the way we think sometimes.

She also uses fairytales as a way to convey meaning, and as the narrative progresses and her amnesia slowly gives way to memories, the fairytales change. I really like that aspect of this book. I think people look for their own lives in stories, and we often have to change the stories in order to fit our lives, and I like that this book recognizes that.

I saw the "twist" coming - the ending was no surprise to me. It wasn't any less heartbreaking for it, but I saw it. I had been looking for it from the beginning - maybe because the book was set up as a book of lies, or maybe because something very much like this happened to my family. Not exactly like this - the stories and the truth never line up in their details. But in the deeper truth, in the heart of it, they are the same, so I wasn't surprised.

And I guess that's the last thing I want to say. That this is a made-up story, but if you look deeper, it is a true story about someone. Someone I knew; someone you know right now. That people, even really smart, wealthy, well-educated people, sometimes make stupid decisions, and do stupid things that lead to awful consequences, and then lie about them. To you; to me; to themselves. And that I really hope you read this, because it is the truth.

Gluten, Casein, and Why The Hell I Eat Weird S**t

Some people think I'm crazy...

A couple of days ago, a Facebook friend asked me for my thoughts on this article. My thoughts are varied and complex, and this is a huge topic that is basically impossible to compress into one blog post, but I suspect that she was asking this question in relation to the gluten-free casein-free diet that The Hubbles and The Kidlets follow, so basically: The study isn't wrong. Also: The study is wrong. More specifically, the study is the wrong study.

Let me explain. You should probably take a moment to get a warm drink; this could take a while, and I'll be linking to articles that you should read in order to really understand all of this.

Okay. First, there are lots of different things that people are talking about when they say "gluten intolerance". Sometimes they mean "Celiac Disease", which the Mayo Clinic explains very well here. It is a very serious disease that involves symptoms that vary from abdominal cramping to full-on "go to the hospital now, because everything is swelling, and staying alive is a good idea". Diagnosis is done via urine tests, blood tests, and a very uncomfortable, very invasive test in which doctors actually reach up in there and cut out a piece of your small intestine and look at it through a microscope. I have a few friends who have been diagnosed with Celiac disease, and it is literally life-or-death for them every time they eat food that they haven't prepared themselves.

It is also not what The Kidlets and The Hubbles have.

So let's move on to the second thing people sometimes mean when they say "gluten intolerance", which is "Non-Celiac gluten sensitivity", which is basically characterized by general bloating and discomfort and tiredness and Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)-type things. This is what the study was looking at: is this a thing? And if it is a thing, is it gluten that is the problem, or is it something else in wheat and other grains, that coincidentally gets eliminated when one follows a gluten-free diet?

Studies like this are important, and I'm glad they're being done, because it's a good idea to get to the bottom of questions like this. And what this study found is that no, it isn't gluten; it's something else. (That something else is called a FODMAP, which is fancy-abbreviating for a short-chain carbohydrate that isn't readily absorbed by the body. You find them in things like corn syrup and artificial sweeteners and other things, as well as gluten-containing grains.) THAT SAID, any study in which a person is asked to self-report (i.e., report their own symptoms) is a study that, in my opinion, needs to be reconsidered, because DUH. You're asking for inconsistencies and bias there, guys. You are practically begging for them. And you are going to get them. In spades.

But IBS-type symptoms are not what The Hubbles and The Kidlets have, either. This study is not about them. Nor is it about most of the people who are both on the Autistic spectrum and need to follow a GF/CF diet. (Although it is about SOME of those people, because that's just how life works. There is always overlap.)

This brings me to the third thing that people sometimes mean when they talk about "gluten intolerance", which is probably best described as a lack of behavioral control when they eat gluten or casein. This can mean: a lack of ability to focus; a lack of ability to moderate their behavior when they feel an overwhelming emotional response; a more extreme emotional response to their surroundings than most people; an increase in self-stimulatory behavior; general difficulty picking up on social cues (as opposed to overtly stated directions); and a few other things that basically fall under "autistic behavior". (This is obviously not a technical term, but, you know, this is already kind of a long post.)

These symptoms are related to gliadorphin and casomorphin, two peptides in gluten and casein that don't get into the bloodstream of most people but do get into the bloodstream of some people, and that, once in the bloodstream, get carried to the brain and activate the same receptors in the brain as opiates. This has been shown to happen in rats, and THIS is the issue The Hubbles and Kidlet Number One have. This is not an allergy. This has nothing to do with antibodies or immune response. This is a chemical reaction akin to what happens when you inject heroin or smoke opium. You can read a little bit about that in this study here and also in this study here.

We figured this out because I noticed a bunch of Asperger-type behaviours in Kidlet Number One starting from when he was a toddler, and I had worked with Autistic kids for years before I had my own kid so I knew that this is sometimes a part of the equation, and so when Kidlet Number One was five and Kidlet Number Two (who never did any of those Asperger-type things) was one-and-a-half, we all peed in cups and sent them off to a lab that found way-too-high levels of gliadorphin and casomorphin in the urine that came out of The Hubbles and Kidlet Number One, and borderline levels in the urine that came out of Kidlet Number Two, and almost nil levels in the urine that came out of me.

So. No gluten and casein for us. Because Science.

We could do a bunch of tests and figure out why this is happening to them. We could try to find out if the problem is a missing enzyme, or a GI tract that lets more things through than it should, or both. But really, why bother? Those tests will be expensive, and they won't change anything about the way they eat.

It is important to note that not all people with Autistic Spectrum Disorder have this issue. It is also important to note that eliminating gluten and casein are NOT "cures" for autism or Asperger Disorder, and anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying, or misinformed, or desperate, or a combination of those things. Kidlet Number One is almost 11, and he still can't lose a board game without being on the verge of tears; he still turns red and starts to hyperventilate a little when plans change, or when his expectations for the day aren't met. There is a huge difference between his response to a sudden rainstorm that rains out a game of baseball, and his younger brother's response. And that is simply who he is. It is what the Universe handed him when he was born.

BUT, this diet has helped him. Kidlet Number One's teachers noticed a huge difference in his behavior when we took out gluten: his sensitivity to noise decreased, the number of total meltdowns decreased, his need to always do the same work in the same order was moderated, and the severity of the meltdowns lessened. His ability to cope with sudden changes to a planned schedule is much better when he is off gluten and casein than when he is on them. It is easier for all of us to live with him, and it is easier for him to live with all of us. And in terms of diagnosis, the psychiatrist put him on the "Asperger" side of the line when he was eating gluten and casein, and on the "normal but quirky" side when he wasn't. But, you know: it's a pretty sketchy line. He went from severe problems coping to less severe problems coping, and problems are problems, no matter what you call them.

SO: what do I think of the study? I think it's not relevant to me, but it might be relevant to you. And I think that we need some words that are more accurate than "gluten intolerance" to talk about all of these issues.

Thanks for stopping by.

BLOOD AND GUTS, it's a fish dissection!

So, The Kidlets and I dissected a fish as a science lesson recently. Here's the result. WARNING: Not for the faint of tummy!




Happy Wednesday!

Monday Musings: On Changing the Status Quo

This is what I've been thinking about lately:




What do YOU think?

A St. Patrick's Day Limerick

In honor of St. Patrick's Day, and in honor of my Leprechaun name Blarney McSmelly, which I love, I composed a limerick:

There once was a gal called McSmelly
Whose toes were all filled with green jelly.
She scraped and she scrubbed,
Heaped it all in a tub,
And sold the lot off to the deli.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Monday Musings: On Promises

A few weeks ago, I took The Kidlets on a bit of a treasure hunt. This is what happened:

May you spend this day, this week, this year, working to fulfill your promises.

Have an awesome Monday.

Monday Musings: On Literacy and Life

I posted this vlog on my YouTube channel "Ishta Mercurio" yesterday as part of my 52 Weeks of Vlogging project. I'll let it speak for itself. :-)

Happy Monday. Happy Reading.

Friday-ish Forward: Two Books to Help Children Cope With Tragedy

This is not the post that I had planned for this weekend. Then again, nobody really plans for the kind of tragedy that happened on Friday. In honor of the children who survived that horrible day, and in honor of the children and teachers who died, I want to share two picture books that I hope will help.

The first is The Heart and the Bottle, by Oliver Jeffers. It tells the story of a little girl who suffers a terrible loss, and her heart hurts so much that she takes it out and puts it in a bottle... Until one day when she finds that she needs it again. It is raw and gentle at the same time, and it cuts straight to how heartbreak feels to a child. You can find it at your local bookstore, or order it here.

The second is Fireboat: the Heroic Adventures of the John J. Harvey, by Maira Kalman. It tells the story of 9/11, and how one old retired fireboat made a difference. This is a book that teaches children that there are always heroes, even in the worst disasters, and that sometimes it is the most unexpected heroes that make the biggest difference. Look for it at your bookstore, or order it here.

I think I've probably said enough for today. More tomorrow.

Peace.

Monday Musings: VOTE ALREADY

So, I spent my Friday night filming my first out-of-country voting experience:





If you follow my tweets, it's pretty obvious who I support. But this vlog isn't about getting you to swing the same way. It's about letting you know that I really believe that things like choosing the President of our country are not things that we should just leave up to everyone else. And when it comes to local issues, like whether to continue a tax levy to fund schools or choosing the next governor of your state, you need to step up, because these things affect you. If you don't care right now, then take a look at your tax bill and think about what that money gets used for. If you think it doesn't affect you, then take a look at your neighbours, because even though it may not affect you, it probably affects them. Learn about the issues. Read the newspaper. Educate yourself.

And vote.

And spread the word!

Happy Monday. :-)

Monday Musings: Heroic Princesses, Body Image, and the Size of Ariel's Butt

Happy Monday!

I've been busy over the weekend learning how to use video-editing software, which I hope will lead to much better quality YouTube videos in the not-too-distant future. But in the meantime, we'll have to settle for ideas over looks.

Which, interestingly, dovetails nicely with my latest vlog:



See you tomorrow, when I'll post my reading of The Elephant's Child in two parts, and announce the book I'll be reading in the lead-up to Halloween. I can't wait!

Summer Shenanigans

Wow. So much for "springing back into the swing of things."

So, this summer I realised a few things:

1) Blogging takes up a lot of time;

2) Reading takes up a lot of time;

3) Keeping up with my writer friends takes a lot of time, although I enjoy spending this time;

4) Writing should be taking up more time.

So here's the skinny:

1) Less blogging, more vlogging. More on that very very soon.

2) More reading* and also reviewing**, since it will help with 4 above. Check in with me on Goodreads (link in the sidebar), or here, since I will be copying and pasting reviews to both places.

3) Much more keeping up with writer friends. I can be found at TorKidLit Tweetups on the first Wednesday of every month and at Toronto CANSCAIP meetings on the second Wednesday of every month. If you write books and live in the general vicinity of Toronto, I shall see you there! I'm the tiny lady with glasses who is swamped by her hair.

4)Writing will be taking up more time. Every evening, at least one scene. It might be a half-page scene, but it will be a scene nonetheless. I'm pantsing my way through this thing and the only way to keep it moving forward is to keep moving forward with it.

In other news, Hubbles and I have family and friends in Old Blighty, so we took the kidlets to see the Olympics. YouTube clips and thoughts video (videos? I can't decide) to come soon, linked here.

Also, we're homeschooling, starting tomorrow. I live on the edge, my writerly friends. The edge of sanity.

Until next time!

*Numbers 1 and 2 will be linked in what I hope will be a pleasant and enjoyable surprise. Stay tuned.
**Please don't actually ask me to review your book - I only want to do largely positive reviews, and I only know it will be one of those after I actually read the book, so I'm just going to pick the books I review. But if I know you, and I liked your book even though you had no idea I had even read it, then you might be pleasantly surprised one day. Deal?