So, I’ve decided to write a post about each of the projects I rescued. I’m actually calling this series “The Runway“, and this will be post two in it. I’m retroactively adding the post where I touched on saving the projects as the first entry in this series. Today, I’m not actually talking about a project that was saved. Instead of talking about one of those projects, I want to talk about Project Ouzel while I’m still kind of editing it before I actually close it up and wait the full six weeks like I said I would. Project Ouzel never needed to be saved because it was never eaten by Dropbox in the first place.
After I hit “publish” on this post, I’ll write a post about one of the projects I rescued. But this is the novel that is closest to being fully written. Also, it is the one I recently drafted almost 89,000 words of in just 24 days. So please forgive me for being a bit self-indulgent before I put this novel away in a drawer.
The girl haunted by the woman she became
Ricky Byrd has a dilemma a lot of trans girls face. An unsupportive family home is a common thing in many trans histories. I know it certainly featured in mine. But Ricky has something most other trans girls don’t have: a spectre who guides her in life. She also has a group of friends who support and love her for her. The story takes us through her sophomore year in high school, where she joins the cheerleading squad, takes up capoeira, and gets a part time job at an occult bookstore. All the while, there are machinations going on in the background.
When her religious extremist father finally breaks down and makes an attempt to take her life, she sees what’s important. As the legal process moves forward and our friend group has to face some uncomfortable truths, we see the ties that bind them together get stronger. We see the value of community and interdependence mattering.
Authenticity, good people, and being able to trust and believe in yourself? Those are the key takeaways from this novel.
My Challenges and Fears
I have a couple of challenges when it comes to this novel and I want to be upfront about them all.
No sermons here.
In writing this project, I didn’t want it to basically be a Crowley-themed version of Left Behind. That’s what I laughed at while ironically consuming Christian media. One of the worst offenders of this is the God’s Not Dead movies. I didn’t want to drop this like a lead balloon into the occult world. I wanted to write something good. The way that I feel I accomplished this was being story-first.
It’s always been about a girl, who was told all her life that she was a boy. The story was born not out of a desire to promulgate the law of liberty (in other words, I didn’t write this to preach to anyone). It was the natural emanation from a prompt that I got off Reedsy. Thelema is a part of the scenery as much as Boulder, Colorado is.
The way I combated this is by trying to give other practices space to breathe and live in the novel. There are no sacred cows here. That’s why Ricky’s mentors have varying religious practices. Her boss at the occult bookstore, Gaia, is a Wiccan. Her friend Amy is a Satanist (though a mix of a sincere spiritual seeker and the teenage rebellion sort since this is a YA novel, after all). And Brittany wears Hermès. Not the Thrice-Great kind, the way more than thrice the price a scarf should cost kind. Yeah, it’s Boulder. I’m not going to pretend that everyone in Boulder is interested in alternative spirituality when I know better. Which brings me to my next point…
I haven’t been to Boulder in years
I’ll be honest, even when I was complying with a departure order from CBSA and flew back to Colorado, I didn’t go to Boulder. I wanted to. A problem I’ve had with places I’ve lived is that I don’t tend to do all the things locally. For example, I’ve never been to Denver’s WaterWorld. And yes, I’m calling it Denver’s WaterWorld because even though Six Flags closed AstroWorld in Houston, the WaterWorld that was right next to it will always be the WaterWorld to me. And even though I’m trying to be better about it, I didn’t attend the Calgary Stampede when I lived in Calgary (though I did attend K-Days in Edmonton last year). I also haven’t fat biked or snowshoed or seen the Aurora Borealis in person…
The Yukon may be a little bit metal, but I am most assuredly not. I am a cozy author who enjoys drinking hot cocoa and watching the snow fall from my window. But here’s my point: I write as someone who lived and worked in Boulder, Colorado for years. Just because I haven’t eaten at the Dushanbe Tea House doesn’t mean that I didn’t go to Naropa University for a year. Or that just because I never skied at Eldora nor attended Frozen Dead Guy Days doesn’t mean I didn’t buy elk meat at the grocery store in Nederland. And while we’re being honest about Colorado…
I’m not going to pretend the Colorado justice system is competent
I won’t pretend that the Colorado justice system is something that it’s not. I literally spent years fighting in court against that illusion. The notion that the Colorado justice system is remotely interested in justice stretches the genre of fantasy past the point of incredulity. I can write about dragons being real with more sincerity than victims getting justice in Colorado. The guy who threatened me with a gun literally admitted to all the elements of felony menacing on body camera. They had him dead to rights and the DA still dropped the case. Colorado’s DAs fuck over victims of crime.
But this book is not a polemic railing against the Colorado justice system. Rather, it’s informed by the experience of a survivor of gun violence. Just as Ricky was held at knife point by her father in the middle of the Ouzel burnout, I was held at gunpoint by Cody Wolfe. And just as Ricky’s father was telling her that “YOU ARE A SHAME TO THIS FUCKING FAMILY!” after describing her mom as a “traitorous cunt”, Cody Wolfe told me at gunpoint that I’d be a better person “if I grew [my] dick back”. I’ll also point to the obvious omission in the parts about the justice system. Namely, at no point did either the Larimer County DA in my novel or the Larimer County DA in my real life ever consider hate crime charges against either offender.
It’s a true statement about something Colorado DAs are doing: letting violent criminals like Cody Wolfe back on the street to terrorize their victims and perverting the course of justice. In writing about this, I pull from my own personal experience walking the streets of Fort Collins as I knew Cody was out there, armed and dangerous. That’s the texture I’m trying to capture: the knowledge that your abuser walked free while you tried to make it to work, to school, to the grocery store.
So, why did I write this novel?
The short story that came out of the Reedsy prompt was only ever about a girl running from herself. That was the story that informed the dream sequences in the novel. What the novel is, is answering the question: what happens when you stop running? When you allow yourself to live freely, without letting fear control you?
Everything else is texture. The father threatening the daughter doesn’t matter as much as the daughter standing up to those threats, refusing to back down. Thelema doesn’t matter as much as the central message: are you the master of your own life? Are you truly nourished, empowered, and sustained by your own spiritual path or are you drained by it? Boulder is the backdrop to a community that Ricky built around her of people that love and care about her. Originally, I set the short story in Houston, Texas. The novel gets Boulder.
And yes, there is a sequel forming. A series, actually. Because the girl becomes the woman, and I’m excited to tell their story.
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