Blog Post Title One
1 - Uhhh, how does this thing work?
Hi, hello, hello, and hi!
I’m M. O’Hara. You can call me “Mo”, “Mo money (mo problems)”, “Crazy bitch”, and “Author with a chocolate problem”. Pleased to meet you.
Contrary to the material I generally write (which is dark fantasy and sometimes a bit of horror) and the resting bitch face I’m told I frequently have, I’m actually the most care-free and dangerously child-like person on the Northeast coast of the United States (or so I’ve been told).
Now, expanding on the last name I mentioned above, I’m getting published! If a book with a thirty year-old alcoholic who desperately needs to go to therapy but instead chooses to hunt down the leader of a group of insurgents, a fourteen year-old girl who likes to give said alcoholic migraines for days, and a world that is a mishmash of Dishonored and the Witcher series strike your fancy, then look no further.
I unfortunately can’t say much about it right now, but it will be coming out later on this year from SmashBear Publishing, who if you haven’t checked out yet, you definitely should.
Some thoughts on growth, recent events and publishing…
My literary journey has taken over a decade to get to this point, about fourteen years if we’re counting when the original concept of this novel was created and not the one that it eventually evolved into. I’m fortunate enough to have had a very supportive best friend who made sure I kept running with the idea and encouraged to morph into something different than I originally had planned. I’m also fortunate to have a best-friend-turned-editor/manager who refused to let me give up. Seriously, this man dug my manuscript out of a dumpster because he was that adamant about seeing me finish the damn thing. Support like that is few and far in between in this life, and I owe my childhood dream coming true to those individuals, as well as SmashBear Publishing, who took the leap of faith and decided that my story was something that was right up their alley.
Since the Cait Corrain discourse has been floating around a long with their recently released interview, I feel I should share my two cents since I am a white femme author with ADHD and mental illness. First off, their behavior was horrible. There’s no excusing their actions and blaming it on depression as well as medication is not how to go about accountability. I myself as a white author have to be cognizant of the space I take up in the publishing industry and the power that I wield as a person of immense privilege. BIPOC authors barely make up any of the traditionally published books in the current market. This is something that is steadily improving, but it also is something to take into account when approaching the publishing world.
I know I’m not going to get it right every single time. I’m human; I’m bound to make mistakes. The difference is learning from those mistakes and owning up to them. Unfortunately, I was raised in an extremely racist and conservative household that drastically narrowed my scope of how the world really works. Contrary to what most of white America thinks, systematic and institutionalized racism is very much still a thing, something that I wish I learned earlier on in life.
My point is that accountability as a white person shouldn’t be shied away from or feared (unless you did some reeeeeeally fucked up shit). Listening and learning from marginalized folks helps us to unlearn unhealthy biases and prejudices. Deep down, despite us not wanting to admit it, we’re all capable and guilty of having certain perceptions of those different than us. It’s the way we were raised due to the system that is currently in place. But we must do better. We owe it to those we love and those who will come after us to be better than those who came before us. We are not our mistakes so long as we choose to learn from them and better ourselves.
Another thing I would like to take the time to address is the genocide currently taking place in Palestine and the atrocities currently being committed against the Palestinian people. Many of us have the great privilege of not having to endure what Palestinians are currently going through. We have readily accessible food, shelter, and medical care. The loudest thing we have to worry about when we go to sleep is traffic being too loud or someone blasting their music until 3 am.
But not them.
The circumstances that the Palestinian people are being subjected to are inhumane, heinous, and nothing short of diabolical. For an author like myself who is currently writing a series based on a dystopian government in a fantasy world, it would be antithetical of me to remain silent or dismiss their suffering. One thing that’s also come up in the discourse of the book world is how white authors will “cosplay” or appropriate the suffering of others for their characters and world and show how wrong it is, but choose to condone or remain silent when the situations they depict in their books are happening in real life to living and breathing people.
This is why it is important to support marginalized authors and Own Voices stories. Everyone’s story deserves to be told. It shouldn’t matter if someone is disabled, queer, a person of color, or perhaps a combination of all three. Our society is evolving in the right direction when it comes to representation and honoring those who experience the consequences of a system founded on a white patriarchy. People who would have never been published one-hundred years ago are now able to have their voices heard and their stories told. While I, myself am a person who comes from immense privilege and comfort, the best thing I can do as well as other privileges folks can do is to rally behind those who need uplifting and be a part of the movement that brings equality and equity to more authors in the publishing industry.
Here are some books by Palestinian authors that you should check out if you’re able to:
What have I been up to?
A very simple question with a very complex answer. Have you ever jumped out of a plane with a burning parachute? That’s me currently. Photo below to show example:
At this point, I’m assuming you’re wondering my thoughts are all over the place and aren’t focused on one specific thing. The answer to that is copious amounts of trauma and mental illnesses that have halted my development as a person for a decade before I realized that I do, in fact, have worth and people care about me. Shocking, I know but hey, better late than never!
I would also like to add that being fully medicated with ADHD meds now in my cocktail of pills I take whenever I wake up in the morning has given me such a vast and exquisite boost in energy that I’m practically bouncing off the walls like a child who was given five pounds of crack and a candy bar. But don’t fret; there’s more memery and unhinged anecdotes for your enjoyment as I navigate this writing journey and tell you about it here.
To summarize, I work two jobs and write on the side. My life currently is one circus event after another with three FOUR furbabies and a roommate to juggle as well as my mercurial mental health.
Some weeks I can bang out a couple of chapters without stopping, other weeks I can’t even get 200 words out due to imposter syndrome and wondering if I’m good enough or ever will be. In the past, I would normally clam up about my mental health because I saw it as a sign of weakness and stigmatized it as a lot of other people do, but it’s 2024 and mental health is a
PRI 👏 OR 👏 I👏 TY 👏
No one is perfect, and it took me the longest time to realize I should stop striving for such a thing when it never existed to begin with. Even if I was perfect, would people accept me? Push me away further? Would I be locked up in a government facility and never see the light of day again? Possibly. We’re allowed to fuck up and fail. That’s part of the human experience, baby. If I showed you what the very first version of this book looked like, you would probably slap my face with it and then immediately set it on fire. It’s nothing compared to where it is now, and I had help along the way, something else I realized I needed to accept. Growth is a wonderful thing, ain’t it?
Mistakes are part of the human nature. It is inevitable that we fuck up one way or another. There is nothing we can do about it besides becoming machines, and even then, would it be worth it? Our failures, our shortcomings and inability to do some things does not mean that the things we CAN do, the things we excel at shouldn’t be recognized. Part of what I’ve learned on my mental health journey is that I need to treat myself with the same amount of grace and compassion as I would any other person, and the same applies for anyone else out there.
You’re not perfect. You never will be. But that doesn’t mean you’re not good enough as is or that you’re not worth recognition. If there was perfection, there would be no individuality or diversity. Life would just be a monotone slate that people wouldn’t be able to change or modify, perhaps even break. We’re allowed to take space and hold it. We all deserve to exist and to be our most authentic selves, even on the days when we feel like we don’t.
Obligatory Section About the Fur Babies
This is Corvo, and he is a menace to society. Chaos Incarnate. The Adversary. Destroyer of Kings. Angel of the Bottomless Pit (like his stomach). Great Beast that is called Dragon. Prince of This World. Father of Lies. Spawn of Satan. Lord of Darkness.
My roommate/best friend and I adopted him back in early September of 2023 because we went to the shelter and he was screaming at us when we saw him. Himbs adorable but also worries me because he tends to run into doorframes and walls at 60 mph. He also has a penchant for antagonizing his sisters, Cirilla and Lilith for shits and giggles™.
(Here’s another picture of Corvo, this time in a large, red pot.)My mind tends to work a lot like how this little scutch acts. My thoughts are essentially fishing line that is permanently in a giant snare with no hope of possibly untangling it all. I get ideas from all over the place. Thoughts about golden retrievers can turn into the first landing on the moon; brownies into a story about a bank heist in Switzerland in 2005. It’s organized chaos that I am somehow able to make sense of.
My inability to focus on one thing for long (unless it’s writing or video games) can also be artistically represented by the chaos of having four fur babies. Our goodest boy, Atreus, tends to think that every fight between the cats is an invitation to play with them.
Between the cats fighting each other, Corvo destroying my apartment little by little, and Atreus chasing them, it’s hard to get anything done sometimes. Similarly, my brain will chase away any notion I will have for being productive unless I take my stimmy. The reason?
The Vibes are Off™
How Has the Writing Been Coming Along?
Charles Sykes/Bravo/Getty Images Much like every other author, I struggle but push on, motivated partially by spite and partially by those who have been supporting me and this journey I am on as an author. It’s hard to feel like I am disappointing myself when I know that I cannot churn out 3,000+ words each time I sit in front of a keyboard and set out to get something done. Time has taught me to be kinder to myself above all else. During the time I was writing my soon to be announced debut, I tried to force myself to get stuff done constantly and berated myself when I didn’t. My constant need to be productive, which was a result of my self-esteem issues, often burned me out and made me take long periods of time to recharge, thus costing more time than when I was actually able to get anything down on paper.
However, I will say that writing book 2 is both easier and harder than writing the first one. For starters, I have an outline this time around. This allows me to jump anywhere in the story and just write willy nilly based on what I feel like writing and work on how to connect everything at a later point in time. A lesson I learned when writing the first book is that forcing myself to go in order only made things more difficult for me instead of easier.
I will say that Cirilla (pictured above), has been doing an excellent job of keeping me focused on working on this book. When I’m writing at home, she climbs up onto the arm of the couch next to me and simply keeps me company. While she is a painfully shy cat, I am also the only one allowed to pick her up (even with her protests). Her small act of companionship has more of an impact than I think she and other chitlings will ever know.
Book 2 definitely has its own set of challenges and hardships. Sophomore Syndrome isn’t entirely an exaggeration and I can understand why people struggle with it as much as they do. I will say that I’m honored to be with SmashBear Publishing, who not only saw through the clusterfuck of a mess my manuscript was when I submitted the earlier version of my book to them and believed in my story, but they told me they wanted the entire thing when I told them my book was part of a series. I have faith that the wonderful team of editors I work with plus my friends and family that do support me will help me make this second book the best it can possibly be.
Here’s a small snippet from my draft of book 2!
Something was nagging at him, creeping up from the pit of his very being and up his spine. Something was coming, something intense enough to make his lungs feel ice cold inside his body. “Arthur?” Maisha asked. He looked at her and took in the worry that creased the edges of her scarlet eyes and russet face. The flames danced along her skin and casted long shadows on the cave walls surrounding them. Arthur ran a hand through his short, black hair. The feeling grew more intense. What was once at the bottom of his core was now rising like a flood to his stomach and continuing to rise rapidly. He was drowning from the inside.
“Arthur?” Maisha asked again. She moved around the fire, closer to him.
Arthur’s eyes widened as a panic began to set in. He braced himself with one hand on the ground, shuddering with each breath he took.
“Arthur!” the girl moved closer to him.
“Stay back!” he yelled. His breathing was loud, like a sick animal’s in the final throes of the death rattles. A force punched him in the gut that stole all the air from his body. He gasped for air as though he were being suffocated by the cave itself.
I broke the 30K mark on the first draft not too long ago, a feat that I’m proud of considering it took me 3x’s as long to get to that point when I was writing my first book. I’ve definitely noticed myself becoming more confident in my writing, and my writing reflecting that with how much better it has gotten versus when I started this series over a decade ago. I’m proud of the growth I’ve gone through as a writer along the way and the help I’ve received that has guided me to where I currently am. I am merely a person with too vivid of an imagination and a keyboard at my disposal. The true magic of writing is sharing it and the feedback you receive from those who care and support you. With that, you can never go wrong.
Here is my third cat, Lilith, pictured standing in her empty water bowl to let me know that I need to refill it. I realized I didn’t include a picture of her further up, so have this one!
Final Thoughts
Thank you all so much for taking the time to read through my rambling nonsense. I know most newsletters are written by sane, level-headed folks and have some semblance of sanity to them, something I couldn’t hope to replicate in a million years due to how…weird I am. I would, however, like to take this time to remind everyone to drink their water, moisterize and wash your faces, brush your teeth, shower if you haven’t recently, and remember to eat nutritious food to keep yourselves energized and healthy. Thanks, everyone! I’ll see you all next month!
-M. O’Hara 💖
