SO, this lovely book of mine came out literally while I was in the hospital last month, meaning I didn’t really get to talk about it at all except for some prescheduled posts I had going live. I AM HERE TO RECTIFY THIS TODAY, BECAUSE Y’ALL: I LOVE THIS BOOK.
This is All The Things We Saved You From, and it’s one of Those Stories that was supposed to be short (and stay short) for the And Then I Shall Transform collection. You know. One of those ones that didn’t. But! That is okay! Because Short Stories That Don’t Stay Short just means more books for you! Which is hardly ever a bad thing, right? RIGHT? 😀 Right.
On one level, this book is ABOUT a man named Tristan who is trapped in a tower because he has a magical ability that the fey are profiting from, in exchange for them not murdering his now-grown daughter. But really, what it’s about, is me, because there’s been this Thing my whole life, as long as I can remember, of me being absolutely afraid deep down in my core that somehow, Being Myself results in other people getting hurt.
This isn’t too much of a stretch, really – I lost a friend in high school because I beat them for an award I didn’t know existed and had no idea we were both eligible for; I’ve been pulled aside by a friend-colleague and asked to tone myself down because they felt they “couldn’t compete” with me for the students’ attention/affection/respect/idek (again, had no idea that was a competition we were in, but okay), and have had a colleague stop bringing cakes into work after seeing a couple of my cakes because theirs ‘couldn’t compete’ (until I told them in no uncertain terms that HELLO, IT WAS NEVER A COMPETITION PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF SANITY STOP MAKING EVERYTHING A COMPETITION I LOATHE COMPETITION AND I LOVED YOU CAKES).
*deranged panting*
Are we sensing a theme here? BECAUSE I SURE DID, and that theme was “even though I personally loathe and despite competition, no matter what I do everyone else will assume I’m competing with them, so if I want them to Not Feel Bad I need to Not Do Things Too Well”. Which, idk how deep you are into the current contemporary iteration of the conversation about ‘playing small’, but long story short, this was a GREAT way to ensure that I was always afraid to actually be myself for fear of driving people away, which was a GREAT way to ensure poor mental health and, as it turns out, poor physical health consequentially 😛
Also it makes a career as an author pretty self-sabotaging, insert upsidedown smile emoji here.
SO ANYWAY, that’s a Thing I’ve been working through the last couple of years and when you really boil it all down, that’s where All The Things We Saved You From came from. It’s obviously not the END of the journey because things like this tend to be lifelong (or so I’ve heard), but the book is a climactic moment of sorts, as sort of “okay we have processed this enough that we can move it back into the background projects rather than the immediately urgent active ones”. Hurrah. We like this.
…I think I had more I was going to say here but I’ve been thoroughly and comprehensively interrupted by like a gazillion things in the interim so NEVER MIND :’D Suffice to say that if the idea of learning to gently but firmly stand up for yourself, whoever that looks like, and finding space to be your favouritest and shiniest self sounds appealing to you, and you like fairytale-esque stories with lots of Voice and lyrical prose, you’ll probably like this book 🙂 It’s short at about 60 pages, so consider it a quick read that will refresh your soul and restore some faith in the value of your Self <3
I love you. You deserve to be big and shiny, or even small and matte-finish, so long as it’s what YOU want for your life.
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