Aria's Song Maps

As part of my fake master’s degree thesis, I wanted to challenge myself. And one of the challenges I decided to take on was to create maps for the series.

I already do a lot of art, and I’ve sketched out rough maps before, so I decided this was a good opportunity to create a map that was good enough to put in a book.

I used a software called Krita, with a touchscreen on a laptop. I had no idea what I was doing when I started, but I messed around creating other art first, figuring out how to use the different tools included in the tool, watched a few videos on it, and then got started.

I created the background layers, then added textures and colors, and then I moved the final image to Canva, where I added the text. My first version of the map printed horribly, so I ended up selecting different fonts and making the text slightly bigger, to make it easier to read in the paperback book.

I was pleasantly surprised with how it turned out. It was challenging, certainly, and required a great deal of time and energy to create. But if I were my own professor, I’d give myself an A.

But the world map wasn’t the only one I needed. In Book 2 of the trilogy, Fugue, the main character spends a significant amount of time in a place called Thistle City (which you don’t see on the map here for reasons that are spoilers.

It didn’t even occur to me to make a map of Thistle City until I was almost ready to start the paperback design of the books. I debated not doing it, but decided it would be a good extra challenge and maybe earn me some extra credit; plus, I thought it would add to a reader’s enjoyment of the stories.

I whipped out the same software and got to work.

The second map was much easier, mostly because I knew how to use the tool, already, so I didn’t have as much figuring out to do. It was also a simpler and more straightforward map, generally speaking. Regardless, I was quite pleased with the output.

In conclusion, I would most definitely create a map for a future book or series again. It was an enjoyable process, for starters, that I think creates a better experience for a reader.

And in case you’re curious, I’ve included the black and white versions below, as they appear in the paperback editions.

Undamaged Goods

Me circa 2008

The last year or so, I’ve been working really hard on my identity. If you’ve never done identity work, this concept might sound a bit strange, but the truth of the matter is that the person I thought I was as a middle schooler, high schooler, and college student are not actually who I have become. Much of my identity then was based not on who I wanted to be, but who I was expected to be.

And I’m not really the type of person to just sit back and let myself evolve. I like to have a say in the matter.

I’m not sure where the drive to understand and decide who I am came from (other than I think it’s a common experience shared by a lot of people), but what I do know is that I’ve been experiencing increasing levels of cognitive dissonance since I was about 12, when a Sunday school teacher told me that if I dated anyone, my future husband would be getting “damaged goods.” The teacher illustrated this point with a very impactful object lesson in which all the girls in class were given construction paper hearts and told to go around the room and “fake date” the boys in class. The boys were instructed to rip a piece off the heart of each girl they dated.

Me circa 2002, clearly very concerned with dating lol

No, the boys did not get hearts too.

After our fake dating, we were told that if we (the girls) dated too much or broke the “rules”, this is what our hearts would look like by the time we met our husbands.

Even at 12, this was very confusing. I already had a basic understanding of biology, and knew that if my heart was literally ripped to shreds like this, I’d be dead. I also understood metaphor, but I struggled to make the leap. How could I become damaged just by dating someone? Were boys really that evil? And in the christianity I was raised in also taught me that god was supposed to be a great healer and forgiver. So… even if something bad did happen, wasn’t he strong enough to prevent this heart-shredding? Or at least fix me after? After all, how was I magically expected to know whether a particular male specimen was the right one? Surely there had to be some room for getting it wrong at least once or twice?

Like I said, cognitive dissonance.

me circa 1988

The question I was walking around was one of right and wrong, morality, and ideology; but more importantly, I was asking the question: What do I think? And why?

The message of “you’re inherently damaged,” was particularly strong in the specific culture I grew up in, and it didn’t apply just to dating. I was inherently sinful in every way, I was told, but I honestly didn’t want to be. I tried to be good anyway, to be better. I believed I was broken, and had to do everything in my power to fix it. But the whole time, there was a part of my mind that didn’t feel damaged. It didn’t feel wrong. It didn’t feel broken.

Sure, I messed up sometimes. But wasn’t that just part of the process of learning how to be a human?

In my efforts to fix myself, I tried to embody the fruits of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, and self control. I tried to be kind and listen and obey my parents. I learned the ten commandments and beatitudes. I followed all the rules taught to me by my sunday school teachers and pastors. I wasn’t always good at it, but I tried.

Mostly, though, I tried to make things make sense.

Me circa 1999, clearly also very concerned with dating lolol

I started my own personal study into apologetics when I was about 13. I read book after book after book on faith, religion, and philosophy, trying desperately to understand what I was missing. By the time I was in my early twenties, I’d made some significant shifts in my understanding of my self and eased the relentless cognitive dissonance somewhat, but then life got hard(er). I graduated during the recession, worked part time jobs making under $20k/year for two years, before I finally got a full-time position that allowed me enough of a financial cushion to have time to think again.

I remember my twenties as being wildly chaotic. I was desperate to figure out how to be an adult, longed for any type of stability or safety, and barely hung by a thread throughout, emotionally speaking. Then, everything I thought was going to be safe or stable turned out not to be: my first company was sold only a little over a year in and I got laid off; the second company had an incredibly toxic environment; I started freelancing with a solid number of contracts and making a good salary, but they slowly dropped off one by one, no longer needing freelancers and preferring full-time employees.

me circa 2013 with my first published book <3

I had started publishing with great hope, but my books didn’t take off. Dating was chaotic even after I met Josh, and then once we decided on each other, it was a whirlwind of dating, moving in, engagement, and marriage, followed almost immediately by his career shift dragging us to a different state.

And it’s only since 2020 (the year everything stopped), that I’ve found a little bit of room to notice myself, and to consider who I’m becoming. And who I want to become.

But it’s not that simple. After all, how do you quantify becoming?

One interesting thing I’ve noticed is that for the first time in my life, I’ve begun to accept one-word labels for myself. Agnostic. Absurdish. Exvangelical. Intelligent. Imaginative. Neurodivergent. Introspective. Wanderer. Opinionated. Curious. Strong.

Me & Chainsaw circa 2016. Nothing says cognitive dissonance like your friend of almost 30 years having a baby

But the one-word labels are, for lack of a better idiom, only the tip of the iceberg. They’re individual words that may have a technical definition in the English language, but they mean something very specific to me (and not necessarily what someone else might think). It’s like saying, “Oh did you read the book about the wizard?” and knowing exactly what book that is, with the whole story, plot, characters entering your mind like a wash of color in response to a simple phrase. But there are a thousand different books about wizards, so someone else might think of a completely different one.

me circa 2010 at my cousin’s wedding

In the book Atomic Habits by James Clear, the author talks about how, if you want to instill a specific set of habits in yourself, one of the most useful things you can do is adopt an identity that those habits reflect. If you want to run, decide you want to be a runner. If you want to write regularly, adopt the identity of writer. Because, if you want to be a runner, then you have to run. If you want to be a writer, you have to write. If you don’t feel like a runner or writer, it’s okay; you can still act like you’re one.

It can create a positive feedback loop over time, and eventually you can look back and realize you’ve embodied the identity you wanted. You want to run, so you identify as a runner; you want to be a runner, so you run. Even if you weren’t a runner before, you are now—because you run, and have consistently over time. And if you want to continue to be a runner, you have to keep running. And voila! Habit.

I love snow. Me circa 2012

I picked runner and writer because they are easy examples. But what does it mean when you’re working with more complex identities? What does it mean to be intelligent, for example? Is it a passive thing, where you just are or you aren’t? Or is it something that you can work on? What actions embody “intelligence”?

Similarly, what does it mean to be imaginative? Or a wanderer? Curious? Introspective? How do the things I choose to spend my time doing embody these concepts? And how do these concepts influence the way I spend my time?

Right there—the answers to those questions? That’s the rest of the iceberg.

Me circa 2006, one of my last parades. Fun fact: this was the first time and only time I ever played bass drum. I usually played bells for parades, but this particular one, none of the bass drums showed up, and five bells players did. So I volunteered, and the drum line was me, one snare player, two cymbals, four bells, and a quints.

And the answers to those questions may be entirely different to me than to someone else.

For example, to me, being imaginative means to use my imagination in a way that is unique to me. Not just for the stories I write (my vocation), but also when I’m solving problems in real life, when I am brainstorming how to spend my weekend, and when I’m being creative in my free time. I even plan time now simply for exercising my imagination. Josh will walk in on me doing nothing but staring out the window, lost in the exploration of an idea.

I’m imagining. Because I’m imaginative.

I can create habits and actions for any identity I want to embody. And I can look at the actions I’m already taking and use those to identify who I am becoming.

In college, I took a class that delved pretty deep into Identity Theory. We looked at how identities develop over time, social identity, and neurology. We explored some of the practical expressions of identity, specifically in the context of communication, which included things like behavior, mental schemas, gender, religion, sexuality, and myriad other things. We read books and essays about identity expression.

me circa 2001 with a box of bees

But I didn’t really get it then. Because back then, I thought I knew who I was. I’d been told my entire life up until that point exactly who I was meant to be. Helpmeet. Future mother. Feminine. Kind. Good. Pure.

But none of those things reflected who I wanted to be. Only who others thought I should be. I can see the double and triple binds inherent in those labels. And I can see why I never fit inside them.

I get it now. I get why you can have a whole class on Identity Theory. And I get that my professors barely scratched the surface. I get why it’s complicated and messy, and why so often it doesn’t seem like it makes sense.

The whole thing about becoming is that it’s hard. And it hurts. And it’s never over.

We become until we die.

And I think maybe that’s what it means to be human.

me circa yesterday (9/27/2022)

Aria's Song Release (Next Week) and Ariele Fake Graduates with her Fake Master's Degree

Next week is a big week for me! All three books in my new trilogy are going live on the same day: September 28th! :scream: If you noticed I hadn't written in a while, that's why; I've been totally immersed in work, trying to have everything ready to go for the 28th.

(Live event is on Facebook at 7 PM EST, September 28!)

This isn't just the launch of another book (or 3) for me, though. If you've been around for a while, you may remember in 2018, I announced I had created a fake master's degree program for myself. I didn't want to pay a university thousands of dollars, but I did want the knowledge. So I developed a curriculum and reading list, set some goals and objectives, and got to work. 

Sometime in 2020, I decided I needed a thesis for my degree. I'd just finished the rough draft of Aria, and decided this would be the perfect project.

Besides the writing of the trilogy, I did a few things to challenge myself. The first was that I did all the design work myself (paperback, cover, ebook), including the maps! It took me forever to do the world map, but I was happy with the results.

I also ... drumroll please ... hid a coded message somewhere in the trilogy.

When I was a kid, I read a lot of mysteries and I loved the idea of secret messages, though I'm not sure I ever successfully found one in a book. Although, I did hide a dollar behind a picture frame once and forgot about it; then found it like 15 years later when I was cleaning stuff out of my parents' house. This time, though, it's a real message that is both hidden and in code, so good luck.

I also planned this to be a Netflix-style series drop to test my distribution and marketing skills. I've decided I might be a little nuts, but I'm making it work anyway haha.

And now here we are, four years since I "went back to school" and 3 years since I began Aria's Song, and it's finally all coming to a conclusion.

In this time, I've read over 300 books, taken almost 20 online courses, taught several dozen workshops and master classes, attended several conferences, written numerous blog posts about writing, marketing, and publishing, as well as published almost 20 books, including Aria's Song. My editors are my professors, and I have a discord server filled with other writers who are a.) wonderful and b.) my "classmates." I'm even working on memorizing the digits of pi as inspired by my math classes. All this and the thesis too.

On one hand, it's tiring to think about; on the other hand, it feels great. I've gotten a lot done, and I plan to get even more done as the years go by.

To celebrate, I'll be talking about the new trilogy at my "graduation" on Facebook Live (7 PM EST Sept 28!) and would love if you were there. There will be plenty of time for questions about me, writing, publishing, or whatever you're curious to know. 

Stay tuned for next week! I'm so excited to share this passion project with you.

You can pre-order the three books here:

P.S. I hid a clue to the secret code somewhere in this post. Good luck!

The Universal Longings Buried in Fairy Tales

A version of this appears in The Bald Princess and Other Tales.

After I graduated high school, I spent a year at Monroe Community College in Rochester, NY. I was taking nineteen credit hours and still a bit bored, so for fun, I would help my roommates with their homework. Yes, I fully admit to being a complete nerd.

At any rate, one day, my roommate Ashley brought me one of her assignments. She had to write a paper for her psychology class, and was stumped. I don’t remember the prompt, but after a brief discussion, I suggested she write a comparative Freudian analysis of Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs. After I pointed out a few of the more obvious Freudian themes, she dove into the project with gusto and ended up with an A.

Freudian analyses, in my opinion, are really easy. Every “that’s what she said” joke is a Freudian analysis in disguise. Much more difficult is looking at fairy tales through a particular historical or philosophical lens. But as of late, I’ve been looking at fairy tales through the lens of a storyteller. And it always starts with this question: Why fairy tales?

Why do fairy tales speak to us? What is it about them that resonates with so many people in so many cultures? How did they garner so much staying power across centuries?

Is it the themes? The story structure? The characters? The plots? The tension? The morals?

Over and over and over, we tell and retell fairy tales. There are written and oral traditions, musicals, video games, movies, and TV shows; when I was a kid, the library even had a book of fairy tales with embroidered illustrations!

Of course, there are a thousand answers to the question of why. Fairy tales are short. They’re easy to remember. They’re weird and funny and peculiar and memorable.

But I have another hypothesis. In the writing community, we like to talk about emotional resonance. T. Taylor named the element of story that causes emotional resonance “universal fantasies” in her book, 7 Figure Fiction, but for the sake of clarity, I’m going to rename it “universal longings.”

The idea is that intrinsic human desires are buried within every story. These longings speak to us on a subconscious level, and while different ones hit different people in different ways, they almost always create an emotional response in the reader. Think about a scene like when Cinderella, for example, is magically made beautiful by her fairy godmother. On one hand, you could argue this is just a common trope frequently used in service to the plot. It is a thing that happens which enables Cinderella to go to the ball to meet the prince.

But underneath this common trope is a universal longing: of beauty coming easily. There’s no sitting in front of a mirror curling hair and putting on makeup. No spending money on expensive dresses and shoes. No going to salons or gyms or wherever else to achieve some external beauty standard. Instead, with the flick of a wand, Cinderella is simply beautiful.

This same or similar longing can be found in many works: The Princess Diaries (done in montage format—she becomes beautiful once and is beautiful thereafter); Hermione’s transformation in The Goblet of Fire; in the Beauty and the Beast movie when she is transformed by the cursed servants (and there’s one in many Disney films); there are even transformation scenes in Person of Interest, Captain America, and Dumb and Dumber. (And of course, many others.)

Or look at Jack Reacher by Lee Child, the books or the (new) TV series (I haven’t seen the old one): six feet tall and super strong, who can eat whatever he wants and still be attractive, who makes an impression on anyone he encounters, always knows the difference between right and wrong, commits violence whenever he wants but is always justified in doing so—these are universal longings, deep desires felt by many people across cultures.

As an aside: in the same way a person might not want to actually engage in a sexual fantasy in real life, these universal longings may not be things we want to experience in reality. But they create an emotional connection point between the creator of a story and the consumer of a story in the form of emotional resonance—they make the reader feel something.

Fairytales are chock full of universal longings: longing to find family (Hansel and Gretel); longing to know for sure if someone else’s love is true (Beauty and the Beast and every true love story); longing to experience danger and come through unscathed (Little Red Riding Hood); longing to find true friendship (Snow White); longing to be recognized for who you truly are (Goose Girl); longing to be proven right (Boy Who Cried Wolf); longing to be special (Princess and the Pea); longing to be accepted into a group or to live forever (Peter Pan); and plenty more.

These longings speak to us on a subconscious level. They allow us the opportunity to live out desires we might not even know we have through the story. Stories with more universal longings in them tend to resonate with readers more, and the more widespread the longing is, the longer the story will last in culture.

The first fairytale retelling I ever loved was Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine. As a 13-year-old voracious reader, I certainly wasn’t thinking about emotional resonance and the craft of storytelling when I read the book. But I read the book over and over and over through high school, college, and young adulthood—I’d guess around twenty-five times.

Ella Enchanted is a Cinderella retelling that spans several years of El’s life. We see her mother die, her father remarry, and her meeting and getting to know the prince. The premise, however, is that she is not a slave to her stepfamily by choice—she was cursed when she was born to always be obedient. Her godmother is her close friend and mentor, but bound by rules of magic and unable to undo the curse placed on her.

In the climactic moment of the book (spoilers ahead), El is in love with the prince. She has thus far successfully hidden her curse from him through cleverness and a bit of luck. He asks her to marry him, phrasing it, unbeknownst to him, as a command: “Say you’ll marry me, Ella.” She knows that if she says yes, anyone could find out about the curse and use her to control the prince, or even to murder him. And so, she finds the strength within herself to say no, to refuse his command, and in doing so, breaks the curse.

So, what is it about this story that resonated emotionally with teenager me?

There were lots of universal longings throughout the book—feeling a lack of connection with family, to missing people who were gone, having a few close friendships built over time, finding someone who loved and cared about you for who you were, being motivated and inspired to learn. But in the final moment of the book, the main universal longing that resonated with me was finding the power within oneself to choose.

It’s a simple enough concept. It’s a longing you can find in many, many books across genres and languages and eras. The shedding of societal, familial, and cultural restraints that bind our thoughts and actions, and then having the power, strength, and courage to make the right choice for us. At thirteen, the idea of having the strength to choose held great emotional weight for me, and that same universal longing still resonates with me today.

I believe that stories have power. I believe that fairy tales have power. And I believe that that power comes from universal longings—from the ability of narrative to connect with a reader’s deepest, subconscious desires. Our desires shape our choices, and our choices shape who we are, and when stories validate or shine the light on our deepest longings, we can better understand why we are who we are, and decide who we want to become.

An Essay About Fairy Tales

A version of this appears in The Bald Princess and Other Tales by me!

One of my favorite things about original fairy tales is how absolutely, unequivocally weird they are.

Modern retellings, my own included, often take the clearest elements of a fairy tale, or the only most basic, underlying structure of the tale, and reapply it in a way that is logical for modern times. For example, you’ll see many Beauty and the Beast retellings that try to eliminate tropes which are now considered problematic—such as themes of bestiality or Stockholm syndrome. You’ll see Cinderella retellings where Cinderella chooses to stay with her family, or ends up encountering the prince well before the ball, so she’s not just running off with a complete stranger. Or retellings of Goose Girl, where the princess has a backbone and doesn’t only rely on magic to solve her problem.

And as part of this process of creating modern retellings, the element of weirdness that permeates so many of the original fairy tales gets written out. Gone are the little surprise nuggets that make you go, “Wait, what just happened?”

Consider, for a moment, Snow White and Rose Red, also known as The Ungrateful Dwarf: in the middle of the original story, the sisters come upon a dwarf with his beard stuck in a tree. Why on earth was his beard stuck in a tree?

The first time I read it, I reread it to make sure I understood, and laughing out loud as the letters “WTF” floated through my brain. Or in the original tale of Cinderella, to make their feet fit into the shoe, her stepsisters chop off their own toes and heels. And in The Little Mermaid, she has to kill the prince and let his blood drip on her feet to turn back into a mermaid.

Those are more well-known stories, but if you get into some of the lesser-known tales, the weird elements get even weirder—in The Mouse, the Bird, and the Sausage, all three aforementioned elements are characters who live together in a house. Just the premise is bizarre. Or have you read Hans the Hedgehog, in which a woman gives birth to a half-boy, half-hedgehog? Or The Three Snake Leaves? Or The Ungrateful Son? And the ones I’ve mentioned so far are just European fairy tales. If you explore stories across the world, like The Bird With Nine Heads, The Woman With Two Skins, The Man With His Leg Tied Up, you will find a wealth of surprising, quirky, and delightful elements mixed in with violence, fear, and destruction.

The weird and wacky abound in old fairy tales, mostly utilized as a technique to teach a lesson (though to be sure, there are more than enough tales that are just weird, with no obvious lesson in sight). As odd as it is, the story The Mouse, the Bird, and the Sausage teaches the reader to find contentment doing what they’re good at; The Ungrateful Son teaches that one should be generous and not greedy; Cinderella teaches that kindness will be rewarded.

But now, many of the lessons previous fairy tales taught us no longer apply. Little Red Riding Hood teaches children to fear the woods, but should we teach our children to fear the woods? Or should we teach them to understand it? And cutting open the wolf with an axe as a solution to the violence it committed would probably be frowned upon by most. And we’re glad Cinderella found a way out of her awful situation, but was marrying a complete stranger really the best option? If the fairy godmother could offer her a fancy dress and a ride to the ball, why couldn’t she have magicked up a job interview or a couple thousand dollars for Cinderella to move to a new city instead?

As society changes, its general values change as well. And the stories we tell reflect those changing values. Or rather, I believe the stories we tell should reflect our changing values.

In 2021, I went on a reading binge, focusing almost exclusively on fairy tale retellings. I read ones you’ve probably heard of, and ones you haven’t. I read fantasy and sci-fi retellings, romance retellings, even some down the pretty steamy end of things, even though steamy isn’t really my cup of tea. I watched a lot of movies too—Holiday fairy tale retellings, young adult retellings, TV shows like Once Upon A Time and Grimm. And I found I was, by and large, rather disappointed.

Sure, there were a few I really liked. And a few I hated. But what I was mostly disappointed by was how closely the underlying values in the modern retellings aligned with the values of the original tales. Are we really still teaching ourselves to be afraid of the unknown? Are we still trying to tell women and girls that their priority in life is marriage to a man? Is true romantic love the only important thing in life?

What about personal agency? What about consent? And having the freedom to make a choice?

Why not teach ourselves what finding choices looks like, or creating love rather than magically being struck with it? Or that not everything is about hard work, and working ourselves to the bone doesn’t make us better than anyone else?

Why not include disabled people in our stories? Or write stories of friendship and trust?

And after some contemplation, what I decided was that perhaps it wasn’t the retellings that were the problem. Perhaps it was the original tales themselves.

So I decided to write some of my own.

The Bald Princess and Other Tales collection of fairy tales reflects me, mostly. It reflects my values, and the underlying themes are those which are important to me. I tend to repeatedly explore themes of personal agency, learning how to change your mind, accepting (or not accepting) the hand you’ve been dealt, what strength looks like, forgiving yourself, and finding ways to connect with and understand people who are different from you.

I don’t claim to speak for everyone. I don’t even mean to suggest that my own values are clear or obvious in these stories. And I certainly don’t mean to suggest that my values are the same as the values of modern culture as a whole.

Instead, all I claim is that in these stories, I attempted to take the quirky oddness I loved in all the old fairy tales I’ve explored, and blend them with values I wish I’d learned from the fairy tales I grew up with.