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Maya MacGregor
2.1k Plays1 year ago
Maya MacGregor is an author, singer, and artist based in Glasgow, Scotland. A fluent Gaelic speaker, Maya is active in many community activities in Gaelic music as well as writing contemporary YA and adult fiction (as Emmie Mears and M Evan MacGriogair). Maya has a degree in history and is passionate about writing the stories for teens they wish had existed when they were younger and fills them with the type of people who have always populated their world. Their pronouns are they/them.
THE MANY HALF-LIVED LIVES OF SAM SYLVESTER is Maya’s first YA novel and is a finalist for the Andre Norton Nebula award. THE EVOLVING TRUTH OF EVER-STRONGER WILL, Maya’s next YA, comes out in 2023.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:01
Speaker
You are listening to Something Rather Than Nothing, creator and host Ken Volante, editor and producer Peter Bauer.
Guest Introduction: Maya McGregor
00:00:16
Speaker
This is Ken Volante with the Something Rather Than Nothing podcast and we have Maya McGregor.
00:00:23
Speaker
author of just a fantastic book I grabbed over at Paul's books in Portland the many half-lived lives of Sam Sylvester a real uh gosh it's just a beautiful book and and I'm happy to have encountered it and I'm happy to have encountered you Maya we're reaching you
Personal Connection to Oregon
00:00:44
Speaker
from Scotland and let's do a hearty, hearty hello from Oregon, which is a place you know well. So welcome to the show.
00:00:54
Speaker
Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here and I do love Oregon. I lived in Portland for four years when I was a kid from 1992 to 1996. So I was quite wee. We left when I was I think 11. So I definitely know Portland well. Powell's was an absolute haven for me as a kid. It was my favorite place to go. I would, any pocket money that I had went
00:01:20
Speaker
it got given to poutles for babysitter clubs books, fair street books. My cat is punching holes in some paper just now, so if you hear a crinkle, that's because she is attempting to perform the
00:01:35
Speaker
shoot through my choose plastic of a hole puncher. So yeah, yeah, you get the you get the I get the plastic. I mean, cats going after plastic. I'm like, at least paper, at least paper resembles the the grass that I think it represents out and out in the yard.
Setting of the Book in Astoria
00:01:52
Speaker
So, you know, of course, you knew Oregon when I was listening, you know, to to to the book and I have a copy here.
00:02:00
Speaker
And they're just being like, well, wait a second, you know, knowing your background and being like, wait a second, Oregon. And I've had guests from Astoria. So as far as the podcast goes, you know, my, my, my mind's pulled in in this way, you know, Portland and Astoria and had poets and writers from Astoria, tattoo artists. Astoria is a very unique
00:02:23
Speaker
place overall in Oregon. And the book takes place there. Not to go on a bit, but I am familiar with the Oregon schools. Sam Sylvester, they are a student, recently moved to Astoria. And you could smell the sea, some of the sea salt in the air. And so
Evolution of the Book's Genre
00:02:50
Speaker
Tell us about the book and how we're in Astoria, Oregon with the half-lived lives of Sam Sylvester.
00:03:03
Speaker
So when I was writing the book, originally it started out as much more of a sort of contemporary fantasy where Sam had very literal past lives and that all died before the age of 19. Through the submission process, when we were trying to sell it to publishers, we were told we should remove that element. So I did and made it just solely a mystery. But then when we sold it to Astra, they were like, we actually quite like
00:03:31
Speaker
the idea of adding paranormal elements into this. So it became a murder mystery with ghosts and the half-lived lives became Sam's autistic special interest. So this book's gone through a lot of evolution and I set it in a story
00:03:48
Speaker
Partially because I'd been there as a kid. We used to go to the Oregon coast and I always really loved the sea there. And I wanted to look for a town that wasn't horribly small, but was also approachable and walkable for someone who was living in the center of it and where it could feel like its own sort of character within the story. So that was really what I was aiming for with the setting.
00:04:18
Speaker
And I also wanted it to feel almost like a haven for Sam in the sense of they are fleeing Montana after trauma and it's something that really factored into how I was structuring
00:04:35
Speaker
the story for Sam as a character developing throughout the book and being able to find a place where they felt safe because it was almost sort of Goldilocksy in the sense of like where they were in Montana was too small, too sort of claustrophobic in the sense that they could not really
Astoria as a Safe Haven
00:04:54
Speaker
hide and then they went to Portland which was much, much bigger than they were used to and ended up feeling sort of lost among everyone there and didn't really have a place they could settle into. But Astoria wanted to be sort of just right in the sense of its role within the story and Sam's development and what they needed I
Astoria's Cultural Significance
00:05:16
Speaker
guess. So that was sort of all played into the part of why I decided to choose Astoria for the setting.
00:05:24
Speaker
Yeah, and I like to I mean, I just as far as because I had that initial impression that I said, I was like, Oh, wow, we're in an Astoria. And, you know, I think I think the setting is really apt for me, I find it to be a very particular place with kind of like own settlement history and kind of danger of the Columbia River and the fishing, like there's all these kind of
00:05:47
Speaker
I don't know, maybe older elements, some unique elements as far as who ended up settling there, like kind of hardy fishermen cultures where you would see, at least I've seen some more kind of Scandinavian settlement patterns there. You see kind of old union halls and fisheries and all that type of thing. It's quite the place. And I think what you said about it being its own
00:06:13
Speaker
character unto itself, I think it just naturally lends itself to that.
Autism Representation in the Book
00:06:22
Speaker
So I was, about the book, I wanted to mention one very, very particular piece that I don't think I've experienced before as a reader listener was that
00:06:39
Speaker
Going deep into the experience of Sam as a person with autism and her life and mind and situations and things that can flare, there's this introduction of a way of experiencing and knowing what can be very unsettling into the environment that most of us would accept, right? And there's a dedication you spend
00:07:09
Speaker
towards describing that and I think it's a risky thing for an author and I think you do it phenomenally because the narrative arc a lot of times is trauma and we would see steps of Sam getting better towards this end.
00:07:31
Speaker
The experience for humans a lot of times or to have a unique interaction with your environment or overstimulation is, it's, days are different and moments are different.
Personal Experiences with Autism
00:07:45
Speaker
And I think at first I was a little like surprised to be like, oh, struggling again, and she's struggling again. And then I realized it's the experience, you know, and you don't just kind of move to her.
00:07:58
Speaker
I think a lot of times when you read, you want to see like these placards of progression and like, yay, and then everything's fine and everything. Um, so I was able to experience deep empathy, uh, around smells, uh, coming in maybe with, uh, with, with Sam or those simulation and really that you took the time as an author to, to give the experience of that and for the reader to feel it and be like,
00:08:27
Speaker
and create a deep connection. It's so noticeable and it was kind of a profound reading experience for me to see that. How important was it for you in this character to get to really describe those pieces and place the reader in a sense of kind of living next to Sam Sylvester?
00:08:53
Speaker
It was really personal for me. I was only diagnosed officially with autism myself, when was that? 2021, so only two years ago. I self-diagnosed when I was about 30, so that was eight years ago now.
00:09:13
Speaker
But I went most of my life without a diagnosis, but it's still being autistic and experiencing all of these different forms of overstimulation and reactions and the way other people reacted to me and certain things that I really it was very important to me on a very personal level to portray that with Sam Sylvester because they are
Systemic Issues in Autism Diagnosis
00:09:40
Speaker
they are based a lot on my own experiences on a sensory level, on an autistic level in general. And so I really took a lot of care with that. And I also had a very, very bad experience with diagnosis, my first attempt to get diagnosed, which is also very, very common for people who are not cisgender. So in particularly those who are either assigned female or non-binary or visibly trans.
00:10:09
Speaker
really experience a lot of discrimination when it comes to diagnosis because research is hugely far behind. There's been one specific phenotype of autism that has been heavily researched and that is cisgender white male. So if you are outside of that,
00:10:30
Speaker
any of those characteristics, you are so much less likely to get diagnosed, to get an appropriate assessment even. And autistic kids fall through the cracks all the time, and they still do, even with the way things are progressing. It is getting better, but it's still very slow. So I went through this, I was editing Sam Sylvester as I was going through that very traumatic, actually, assessment process with someone who was
00:10:58
Speaker
was just harsh and cruel and I've literally not met someone who's been assessed by this person who did not leave feeling traumatised. So it's just bad stuff. So it's really important to me to portray
00:11:16
Speaker
Sam's autism in a way that felt really, really resonant to me as someone who is also non-binary. Sam's non-binary and uses they them pronouns. And they go through the world in a way that I want to increase empathy in people because I think a lot of the times autistic people we are
00:11:40
Speaker
perceived in a way that doesn't match our actual experience. So for instance, if I am in a place of sensory overload, if there are a lot of smells or if there are a lot of competing noises, if I'm in a pub where there's glasses clinking and 50 different conversations happening and music blasting and all of these things,
00:11:58
Speaker
my brain can't actually differentiate between the importance of all of those sounds. So the person who's standing right directly next to me and trying to have a conversation with me might see me looking another way or appearing to not be paying attention to them or might just see me completely shut down and not be able to respond and think that I am being rude, which has happened so many times in my life where I've gotten feedback from people after the fact. So Sam's
00:12:25
Speaker
experiences and Sam's understanding of their world and how it impacts their life was something really important to me. And that also really coincides with Sam's trauma because living in a world like that is very traumatic for autistic people. There's very, very rarely autistic people. I've yet to meet another autistic person who's not also someone who has PTSD or CPTSD because we
Autism and Trauma in Sam's Character
00:12:52
Speaker
It's really, really hard to constantly try to force yourself into a world and deal with that level of extra stimulus all the time without
00:13:02
Speaker
developing trauma responses. So Sam's, those two experiences definitely intersect throughout the book and in Sam's character progression and as the story goes on and you see Sam get triggered by certain things and on both levels of trauma and their autism and where those things combine. Yeah, thank you. I don't know, I'm gonna
00:13:28
Speaker
I mentioned a couple of things and it's a little clumsy in my thinking, but in doing the show and talking to artists and encountering lots of different minds or atypical minds, my mind itself, what's up here, doesn't correspond to a lot of what I see. Not neatly.
00:13:57
Speaker
I've talked to a lot of folks and my partner's a teacher, an autism specialist, and I've really been shocked at my understanding of where we are as far as the needs and things like diagnosis.
Mental Health Understanding Progression
00:14:18
Speaker
I followed a thread through an author of those diagnosed ADHD.
00:14:24
Speaker
As females, and it has a great title for a podcast, like ADHD AF, like as fuck. And, um, you know, for myself, like just trying to learn, like me, my mind, not just self-diagnosis, understand what minds do. Just reading the characteristics or some of the experiences of ADHD. And there's so many places that there isn't a correspondence where me as a cisgender male,
00:14:53
Speaker
where you look at it, the experiences are different. How it comes in, how it comes in at you is different. I lived in Madison, Wisconsin for about 10 years, and there's a kind of a special education. There's a place called the Wiseman Center Research. So you have a college research cultural influence around the area where even the public schools is an attractor.
00:15:22
Speaker
for a student's need in a special education. And then I would say I was kind of flipped into Oregon, which was a very different environment with different school systems and pieces. And as we talk about mental health, a lot of times in the areas, I feel like we're beginning to talk about it.
00:15:46
Speaker
and humans been kicking around this earth for a long, long time. I feel like we're starting to talk about these things and that idea astounds me. I can't settle on that.
00:16:02
Speaker
There's been, you know, it's something that's like people do talk about like they're being far more diagnoses nowadays than
Barriers to Autism Diagnosis
00:16:09
Speaker
there used to be. And that's really just because now we sort of know what we're looking for in a way that we didn't before. And, you know, previously, like if you are someone with high support needs, I highly prefer using high support needs to
00:16:27
Speaker
low functioning or high functioning labels because I find those are not helpful because they're quite insulting because it just really always depends on the context for someone. My ability to function changes daily and my support needs change daily but previously people with high support needs would have just really been put into an asylum or they would have been shut away from society and they would just sort of lump everyone in under
00:16:55
Speaker
certain umbrellas. Yeah. Nervous, like nervous personality. Nervous personality or any number of things like that. And these days, I think it's really good because we're also seeing how common these things actually are because a lot of the times, I think we
00:17:19
Speaker
when you have a specific way of being that's the only real accepted way of being for a very long time, and it's not really safe to deviate from that in any way, I think that when you start allowing people to
00:17:35
Speaker
push those boundaries a wee bit and listen to people's experiences. And as we've started to understand more about how people experience the world, people who may not verbalize with their voice boxes, but who can communicate and tell us about their experiences. And they have just as rich and a textured in our life as anyone else. And I think there's, you know, there's just a lot of learning that's been happening, particularly in the last hundred years about
Role of Self-Diagnosis in Autism
00:18:04
Speaker
about different minds and how we work. And the neurology even is just actually literally scanning brains and finding out what's going on in there. Because it actually is different. And that's what's quite fascinating as well, is we really literally are a different neurotype in how we experience things, how we process information. And so, yeah, I do think it's really interesting. On the note of self-diagnosis, self-diagnosis is so normal.
00:18:33
Speaker
It's just really, it's like very frequently, it's the first way any of us figured out what's going on with us at home. We want to know like, what's the answer? What is this? We take a guess or if we hear things that sound right, then we're like, oh, that actually, you know, that's going to be my first step when I talk to my doctor or something like that.
00:18:48
Speaker
And if we have our own experiences, like if you've had bronchitis 14 times, you probably know what bronchitis feels like. So when you look at bronchitis again, they'll look down your throat and be like, ah, you've got bronchitis again. And I think on a lot of levels like that, and particularly because with autism and ADHD, there's such a discrepancy in terms of formal diagnosis and access issues. If you're talking in the United States,
00:19:16
Speaker
health insurance, having access to a provider. When I was in the US and was looking for an autism diagnosis, I was told it was going to be $6,000. Yeah, $6,000 without insurance. That's an exorbitant amount of money that most people, I think, cannot afford. And here we have the NHS, which is fantastic.
00:19:38
Speaker
But I also had a really terrible experience with the NHS here. And the Scottish NHS has been phenomenal with almost every experience that I've had with them. That's the only one that's been awful. And I ended up having to go private and that was £1,500, which is much less than £6,000. But that was an enormous expense that I was very fortunate to be able to pay out of pocket. But there's just
00:20:05
Speaker
even at a clinical level when you're talking to experts, the research is so far behind for most demographics. It can be really hit or miss and it can be really demoralizing and it can be really daunting for someone who is
00:20:24
Speaker
wanting to approach diagnosis but knows that and knows that they are out with that circle of who's going to be an easier diagnosis. I had another friend who recently saw that same clinician who was so awful with me and he had
00:20:42
Speaker
he's this this man. He did get his diagnosis, but it was still so traumatic for him. And he just left feeling completely demoralized and broken down and was really, really upset. And that person really shouldn't be working with autistic people.
Educational Disparities and Racism
00:21:00
Speaker
So it's really tough. And I'm very glad that things are progressing as they are. But at the same time, there's still a lot of people falling through the cracks. Yeah.
00:21:12
Speaker
Yeah, well, and I think, you know, I've seen the issue in a variety way is sometimes you see over identification, under identification, in particular, cultural groups, you know, what's in the school system, the school system, very complicated dynamic of how you see, you know, the, the kind of idea of, you know, the complicated, like, oppositional diagnosis for African American
00:21:37
Speaker
emotional disturbance is the one that I taught special education in DC for one year and that just was so upsetting to me. I taught the pupils who had quote unquote emotional disturbance and
00:21:53
Speaker
Yeah, and I was just so upset by the fact that that was a label they put on any child, but it was it was all black boys and it was just it is the ED is opposite is oppositional was black versus white like and it sounds like a simple thing to say but
00:22:08
Speaker
So this, it's just, it's so stark and it's so obviously racist. It's just, and you see it and you just, you can't fix it. And it's just, it makes it like you can't fix the fact that these are the labels they're putting on kids when it's like, no, probably a solid half of the boys in my class were actually autistic. Like that's just, but I like couldn't help that. I couldn't fix it myself. So yeah, it's just very, can feel very,
Reflections on Atypical Minds
00:22:37
Speaker
Demortalizing and also really in some ways energizing if you feel in a position where you can actually affect change But it can be really also difficult and just have to meet the pupils need you to meet them where they are and so yeah And with with where you are with them and then thank you for talking about this I mean, I think for you know, just just for myself I
00:23:01
Speaker
It's something I think about a lot now and I think I think about it more because of the question I was asking like how do we just start on this because I figure even for myself I turn 51 in a month and I think about my experiences and what I would say quite simply is this is that I have an atypical mind and I am positive I am positive positive positive that my early alter adult hood was to
00:23:31
Speaker
figure out how to, how to, I was liked and stuff on my eccentric personality, but how to be, what is it that you do in life? What are the choices? I mean, if the choices that I think are so radically different than those around me, do I doubt my behavior towards, and I, I really went into that, but I tell you though too, not to add into it a lot, but, um, I think it was really heavily tied to drinking to be normal.
00:24:01
Speaker
drinking to be like others when like if I was in a bar my bad too loud excitability all this type of stuff Whatever that is.
Social Challenges for Neurodivergent Individuals
00:24:11
Speaker
Yeah, it was like normalized or something And that was helpful until it wasn't helpful
00:24:19
Speaker
Yeah, I think a lot of undiagnosed neurotypical people, I think a lot of us really self-medicate and alcohol is a big way that people do it because it does lower inhibitions, it makes you less
00:24:38
Speaker
necessarily concerned with social cues. Beyond that, definitely other substances as well, like when it comes to stimulants or for people with ADHD or for autistic people, it could be any number of things.
00:24:59
Speaker
My early years of adulthood were quite similar in the sense of trying to not only navigate young adulthood, but also to learn the rules that I couldn't intuit. And I think that that's something that's really hard for a lot of people when one of your primary differences in neurotype effects like whether or not you can actually intuit
00:25:29
Speaker
social workings and things that other people don't need to be taught, but you need to be explicitly taught. And then how do I do this for asking questions? And that's the other weird piece of it is like, I used to ask like why I couldn't do such XYZ or why, you know, you know, why people would tell me I'm not supposed to lie. But then if I tell them how I'm actually doing when they ask me, then they get upset. Like it's just those sorts of things where like you,
00:25:59
Speaker
You don't know, you just don't know how to do those things and so you keep trying and you keep trying and you gather all this data and you have to like aggregate it yourself in your head and go through all these different things and it's a lot of work and I've like I was just the friend of mine who just got diagnosed we had lunch last week and
Normalizing Stimming Behaviors
00:26:17
Speaker
and one of the things we were talking about was stimming and you can't see my hands because I have them below the screen but I've got a rock in each hand and I am almost constantly stimming because it's a way for me to be able to concentrate because it's an outlet of I think I use the metaphor in the many half-lived lives of Sam Sylvester where I talk about
00:26:40
Speaker
sensory input is like being a balloon that cannot pop, but you've got all of these different straws that are breathing air into you and inflating your insides, but there's nowhere for that air to go. So in Sam's case, it comes out in self harm. Yeah, any sort of physical, you often need some sort of physical outlet for it. And stem cubes are fantastic. I also have those, but sometimes I just like a rock because I can squeeze it and it's not going to hurt it. And
00:27:11
Speaker
And Sam will punch their leg, and that's also something that I do. I will sometimes hit myself. But now that I know what's happening, I'm a lot less likely to do those things because I have learned how to recognize my body's cues as I get into a place where my
00:27:27
Speaker
if I get overwhelmed, which is why I've been more forgiving with myself with stimming and I've not tried to hide it as much. And there are some stims that a lot of people do, whether it's shaking their leg in public or tapping something. Those are all stims and not only ADHD and autistic people use them.
00:27:46
Speaker
Um, but my friend and I were, we're out and we were both, we were both just at the table sort of doing like occasionally doing this or something like that together. And we were, it was nice because it was like, we both know what's happening. We'd know like breathing if it's like maybe like breathing a little bit, just letting it out. It's normal. And I really like.
00:28:07
Speaker
trying to normalize that which is why I do like when I'm on a panel or something like that when I'm on video I will show my stem cubes and stuff to people and be like look like I've got this today and here we're on a podcast so people can't see that but I like I've held them up and have
00:28:25
Speaker
You know, we are verbally talking about it because I think it's important and it is important to normalize because I think a lot of those behaviors in schools are considered disruptive. So if you have a kid in a school who's doing this in the back of the room,
00:28:42
Speaker
a lot of times that kid will get in trouble and they're not hurting anyone.
Awareness of Neurodivergent Behaviors
00:28:47
Speaker
They're not jiggling someone else's desk with their foot or anything like that. They're just doing this, but they might get told they're being a distraction. And so they get taught to sort of contain and to make themselves smaller and to be uncomfortable and to put themselves through physical discomfort of being overstimulated and having no outlet. And then when that boils up to the point where they could no longer handle it, they either
00:29:12
Speaker
outbursts and have an explosive sort of reaction to something or they implode and might cry or have something that gets them labeled too sensitive or something like that because after a full day of
00:29:29
Speaker
holding everything in, you know, their shoe came untied and they started crying, you know, like it's the one last thing, the straw that breaks the camel's back. So I think, yeah, I think just
00:29:43
Speaker
the more that we talk about these things, the more it becomes easier for people to understand just how common they are. And maybe to be a way a bit more understanding, if you see someone in public who's moving a bit and looks agitated, it might not be that they're agitated. That might just be how they are remaining not agitated. Yeah, I think people are seeing a lot more of that. And I want to dive into just
00:30:09
Speaker
great to talk with you. I want to dive into what happens too with the character. We're talking about a lot of the struggles and the way this
00:30:20
Speaker
sometimes crazy ass world seems to be or misunderstand or minds trying to figure out. But we have this gorgeous, beautiful character, Sam Sylvester, who is just a tour de force of a character.
Praise for Sam Sylvester's Character
00:30:34
Speaker
And, you know, I'm thinking special abilities, special talents, special sensitivity, special connection to people. So
00:30:47
Speaker
Tell us about this delightfully designed, fantastically written, and mentally stimulating book, Many Half-Lived Lives of Sam Sylvester. Tell us what the listeners can get a little feel for the story itself.
00:31:05
Speaker
So yeah, so Sam, I think one of the things that I loved about writing this character is we have someone who's been traumatized, but we also have someone who's very highly supported by their parental figure. Sam lives with a single dad by choice. Love the dad.
00:31:21
Speaker
Junius is like dad wish fulfillment honestly and he really really wants Sam to be safe so he makes space for Sam to to be Sam and I think that's really really important because you see Sam's confidence really come out throughout this book as Sam is able to sort of just be himself and and go through the world in a way that feels right to them. I did want to read a wee bit from this that I think will give a slight
00:31:51
Speaker
I see this. Oh, I put it in this book. I was saying to Ken before we started recording that I will put a bookmark in a book.
00:31:59
Speaker
And I've got so many copies of Sam around the shop that I will go and look for the one that I bookmarked and I won't be able to find
Supernatural Elements in the Book
00:32:07
Speaker
it. But I have I have a really lovely hardcover copy here that Dazzling Bookish Shop did sprayed edges for and they're really cool. So it's like a silhouette of a tree and a raven flying away on it. And it's in the same colors, the purples of the of the title. The cover art also I should see on here is one of my
00:32:30
Speaker
just I'm still just absolutely obsessed with it. It's a striking book. I love it still so, so much. So I'm going to read just this wee bit from
00:32:49
Speaker
Chapter 15, so it's in the middle of the book, but this, I think, gives a good flavor for some sort of processing of what happened to them, as well as these spooky aspects of the book. Yeah. The blank Tumblr post glows balefully at me. It's like it knows everything inside of me that wants to come out. The white text box and blinking cursor ooze resentment, anger.
00:33:17
Speaker
My fingers hit the keys with crisp taps. Coming here was supposed to mean getting away from you. This was a place where no one knew what you'd done but me and dad and those who have to. A place where everyone could know me, but where I wasn't defined by what you did. That's all ruined now. I don't know whose fault it is. I started to tell someone myself, but I got interrupted. I have to believe that. I stopped typing. My fingers are shaking too much.
00:33:47
Speaker
I hit post even though the thought isn't finished. I don't quite know what I have to believe, that I can talk to Shep, that I'm safe with Shep, that I'm safe here. The last thought makes me laugh, as if I can be safe anywhere. My laptop goes on the window seat behind my bed. I pull Sam's book of half-lived lives out from beside it.
Book's Reception Among LGBTQ Readers
00:34:09
Speaker
I snuggle down into the covers, tugging them up to my chin.
00:34:13
Speaker
Pages of this book are worn on the edges and it doesn't close neatly because it's so full of pasted in things, but that just makes it more mine. I open to a page at random and grimace. Lisbeth. She's the one who gutted me for weeks when I learnt about her. I have her entire journal on my Kindle and copied a few passages into this book, but it's not her I need to see right now. I flip to Billie's page. Almost as soon as I do, a shiver washes over me.
00:34:42
Speaker
and any sleepiness is carried away on the tide. This time, the popcorn smell is unmissable. The buzzed part of my head feels like a startled porcupine. I sit up, shrugging off the covers and picking up my phone to text shit, but something stops me. When I see my face reflected in the screen of my phone, it's just me. Just Sam. But the smell doesn't go away. I close my eyes and put the phone back down.
00:35:09
Speaker
The air in my room feels like it felt in the principal's office today. Heavy and tense like the electricity in the air before a lightning storm. I see blue and green waves behind my closed eyes like Margie Frankel's framed mandala feel the snap of friction. My stomach growls and the smell of popcorn is so strong I shove back the covers and get up going to the door to open it. I make it to the top of the stairs sniffing like some kind of bloodhound but the smell fades as soon as I leave my bedroom.
00:35:39
Speaker
So does the tension. When I step back into my room though, Billy's room, it's still there. It feels insistent. My fingers are shaking. What do you want? I don't expect an answer and I don't get one.
00:36:07
Speaker
Yeah, I um, I was heard you talk about the way they were looking to cut some of the, or think about not exploring the supernatural elements. And this is a story of ghosts, you know, it's a story of people who are here. They're not here and they're here. And, um,
00:36:30
Speaker
Thank you for your reading. That's my secret joy with authors. You offered right off the bat. I thought a lot about just
00:36:48
Speaker
at first and seeing the title, I mean, what is half-lived lives? And then quickly in listening to the book, the very powerful idea of loss too early or of what hasn't been lived as a strong component, of course, tie into Sam herself, the ability to live, the ability to prosper.
00:37:13
Speaker
I wanted to ask you about the book because it was kind of special to me to run into surprises related to you with Oregon. I was at Powell's yesterday after driving through the state. I was almost leaving and then I turned back to my partner Jenny.
00:37:32
Speaker
Wait a second, Sam Syvelles is here and I know there's a Paul's connection, went back, there's a couple copies.
Engagements with Young Readers
00:37:40
Speaker
This book seems like a big, super important book and I'm wondering about the reception of it. I'm just fascinated, what are your appearances like? What are people asking about this? So it's been really, I've been really overwhelmed, but most of my interactions with readers have happened online.
00:38:02
Speaker
I haven't really done a heap of events in person and that is slowly changing. But I think one of the more powerful things for me was last year I was invited up to Aberdeen.
00:38:20
Speaker
to do an event at a local high school at Hazel Head Academy for the Wayward Festival that Aberdeen University does. And they have a young people's track for the high school that was organized separately from the one at the university. And I was invited there for the day, so I spent the morning in the Gallic medium unit with the Gallic speakers, which was also fantastic. And then in the afternoon,
00:38:48
Speaker
they'd planned an event about Sam Sylvester for me in the library. And what I didn't know at the time was that they actually were planning to bus in all of the LGBTQ alliances from Aberdeen City. So there were about 80 kids there. And I had absolutely no idea there were going to be that many people. So I walked in, I was like, that's a lot of chairs.
00:39:15
Speaker
First problem. Yeah, well that's a lot of tears. But they hadn't read the book yet. The book had just been out for a few months in the US and had only just come out here in the UK because it was a few months late. And I was just really not sure what to expect because, you know, with teens sometimes they can be quite shy and they might not
00:39:43
Speaker
be willing to ask questions. But I talked to them for a wee while. I just told them about my own experiences. I told them about Sam, and I told them about how my own experience sort of dovetailed with Sam, how Sam's life was based on a lot of my own personal experiences growing up all over the place and then living for several years in a small village in Montana. And a lot of Sam's experiences there came out of my own.
00:40:13
Speaker
And then I asked them for questions and they absolutely blew me away. They asked me...
00:40:20
Speaker
everything under the sun from how do I get more motivation to write or does you know does fanfic count and like yes fanfic absolutely counts write all the things that so many people learn how to cut their teeth on story by by writing fanfic and it's beautiful do it um and everything from writing about you know like writing craft questions to how do I come out to my parents and
00:40:48
Speaker
I think I might be non-binary, but I'm not sure. And after we all finished, a lot of these kids asked their questions in front of everyone. But afterwards, they absolutely mobbed me. And I'd never had an experience like that before. I swear all 80 of them queued to come and talk to me. And they confided in me.
00:41:15
Speaker
they told me how excited they were to read the book and how it meant something to them to see a character like them. And it just really, it really, really touched me on so many levels.
Support for LGBTQ Youth
00:41:29
Speaker
And I had a moment before they all started coming up to me, just where I looked around and I was just like, I have to tell you all this, like, you know, seeing so many of you here sitting in front of me in school. Yeah, yeah.
00:41:45
Speaker
As part of your school day, that was unthinkable when I was their age. That was absolutely unthinkable. You could have 80 kids who were out enough to go to a queer themed event on purpose. And with supportive teachers at their backs, these teachers were there 100%.
00:42:13
Speaker
there for them. The library was covered in pride flags anyway. The school had murals supporting queer students. And I told them, I know things are scary right now. They are so scary for kids right now still. And seeing the backlash that we are getting after the progress of the last few decades is really hard.
00:42:37
Speaker
But they have each other in a way that my generation didn't. Like they are visible to each other. They have a community that is present and accounted for. And that's not speaking for all the kids who are still in the closet and who still might be questioning and not have that yet. But there have been massive strides happen. So the reception to the book has been absolutely beyond any of my
00:43:03
Speaker
expectations. And the messages that I've gotten from people, I got a handmade card with a four leaf clover on it from a fan in Germany. And I've just been really, really touched by everyone's response to it.
Importance of Representation in Literature
00:43:20
Speaker
And I think the reader responses have been
00:43:25
Speaker
Like I mentioned, I think, to you before we started recording Sam Sylvester was my 17th novel. And I've frequently published to resounding silence. And I think it can be quite discouraging sometimes. And this book made every rejection, every failure, every day of publishing to crickets worth it because
Involvement in Gallic Music
00:43:56
Speaker
Sam's meant something to people in a way. I wrote the book that I wish I'd had at that age and I'm so glad I did because it's I want it to be there for I want it to be there for the next generation. So they they always have these books. So so no generation ever has to grow up again without them. Well, congratulations. I mean, it's truly it's truly an important book. And I think the you know, I think
00:44:24
Speaker
The approach of any reader is, I think when characters are the ones, when you have that close connection to the character, the way that it's written, you moved into the experience and the building of empathy through the written word is profound for change for me. And having a wonderful character person, Sam,
00:44:50
Speaker
connect to is incredible. So, goodness, you sing as well, Gallic. And I saw that, and I went on to Deep Pond and saying, where is it all? But you're going to have to tell us about it. I was deeply fascinated with lyricism, book writing. I must admit, I know Gallic and
00:45:18
Speaker
Tell us about what we need to know and where you're from and where you're talking to us right now.
00:45:26
Speaker
So I am speaking to you from Glasgow, Scotland, where the sun has just come out again, which is nice. The clouds here move very quickly, and it's always fascinating for you to watch them. You can literally just sort of track them across the sky. But, yeah, so I love in Glasgow, which is the biggest city in Scotland. And the best one, sorry, all the others. Oh, hey, you know. Glasgow Edinburgh Rival Road. I was going to say, like, I know, that's all I know, that the Edinburgh, I had a really-
00:45:58
Speaker
I live in actually historically Gallic part of Glasgow, Partik, where 100 years ago there were 30,000 Gallic speakers. Lots of Gallic speakers came down from the Highlands and Islands to work in the shipyards on the Clyde River. And my upstairs neighbour is actually from Harris and is a native Gallic speaker.
00:46:19
Speaker
I sing in two different Gallic choirs and the sort of normal choir in the sense that it's my weekly choir that I go to as the Glasgow Gallic Musical Association, the GG's, affectionately, and we meet in a local church every Monday and we
00:46:38
Speaker
sing traditional Gallic choral music which is such a huge part of my life and it's such an important part of my life. Gallic music has a number of traditions that just don't exist even in other Celtic countries and languages. We have different types of song that are very specific to Scottish gildum and
00:47:04
Speaker
And it's such a pleasure getting to sing choral music with people. And I sing in that choir. I also sing with another choir that's formed from singers from all over Scotland. And we are Caushard Allapeh, which is a Scotland choir. I guess that sounds weird when you translate it. But we were actually formed for the 2019 Eurovision choir competition in Gothenburg, Sweden.
00:47:34
Speaker
So we traveled to Gothenburg in 2019 to compete with other European choirs. And we were the first ever Scottish representative on the Eurovision stage as Scotland and not as the UK. There was also a Welsh choir there, which I think held the same distinction for themselves. And it was such a phenomenal, beautiful experience with people singing in their native languages and just
00:48:05
Speaker
being there to enjoy music together, I think one of the most phenomenal experiences was when we lost. We didn't go into the finals and I think it was my conductor, Joy, who was like, you know what, let's just all go out into the car park and sing our final pieces because we wouldn't have had a chance to sing them otherwise.
Magic of Choral Music
00:48:25
Speaker
So all of the choirs who didn't make it to the finals, we all went out to the car park in this massive stadium in this arena in Gothenburg and just all performed our final pieces to each other, like a pitch perfect riff off, essentially. I wasn't going to say that was in my mind. I wasn't saying my mind was going to be perfect.
00:48:50
Speaker
So, Deke Sharon, who did the acapella music for Pitch Perfect, he was one of the judges of the score. Are you kidding me? Also, he knows my agent, Sarah, because her husband, Mark, is in Facebook, which is an acapella band. So, it was a really funny, random, weird connection.
00:49:08
Speaker
But it was just like, I've never experienced anything so electric.
Language and Thought
00:49:13
Speaker
And it wasn't, there was no audience aside from ourselves. And it was really just, it was, everyone was just gassing each other up, like cheering and laughing and having like just absolutely all ISO in the choir performing. And it was such a magical moment. So gallery music is obviously a huge, huge part of my life. I'm actually doing my first, my first choral, my first solo.
00:49:37
Speaker
gig in, oh, slightly less than a month on the 28th here at the Glasgow Centre for Contemporary Arts, CCA. It's called Stratek and the Strade, and it's a series of, I mean, street sparks, and it's a series of musical events that have been put on by an organisation called Kiolis Krak to
00:50:00
Speaker
to sort of showcase contemporary Gallic music. So I was actually commissioned along with Broken Chantor, who's a fantastic sort of indie pop musician here in Glasgow, to create a set of original Gallic songs for this event. So we are going to be performing those songs in a few of Davey's own songs in Gallic. And then we'll be performing with our good friends Josie Duncan and Man of the Minch,
00:50:28
Speaker
which will be fantastic. I'm just really, I'm really, really fortunate to be in a place where, you know, I think Gallic language and Gallic music are part of a culture that has been actively sort of
00:50:43
Speaker
killed off in the last 200 years. There are only 55,000 remaining Gaelic speakers and the language is declining hugely. There are very, very few communities where it's still spoken as a community language, where 100 years ago in the highlands, if you'd go into the highlands,
00:50:59
Speaker
75 to 90 percent of the population. Wow. Yeah. As the first language. Yeah. So so it's just it's it's it's really, really deeply important to me to to continue on our traditions and to create original things in Gallic. So I am also working on my first Gallic novel and I have a new novel on submission that I hope I hope I hope I hope finds a home that is
00:51:25
Speaker
set in Argyle that is a contemporary fantasy that involves the fair folk and an autistic agender protagonist who stumbles into their world and involves a lot of Gallic and a lot of sort of things that I think about a lot in terms of intergenerational language transmission and how we pass on it.
00:51:47
Speaker
community knowledge to the next generation and those ties, what happens when they get broken, and how we rebuild them. Gallic music obviously forms the backbone of my daily life, actually. Very important to me. The important language, my simple thinking on it. I'm trained philosopher, thinker in my life, academic background. But for me, I've always saw
00:52:17
Speaker
So the connection of language and ideas, I think there's ideas that can be only expressed in particular ways through language. And I think the ability to have language to offer up ideas outside of translation or anything like that, that the mind moves through what you can express or you can't express with the language.
00:52:40
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. And I think on a macro level, there's the Saper-Wurf hypothesis that they talk about, which is the idea that that language dictates how we think. And I think on a macro level, there's a lot of linguists who have sort of poo-pooed that idea, which rightly so. I mean, there's one thing to make it a causal thing, like if you speak this language, you will be able to do X, Y, Z.
00:53:04
Speaker
But also on a more micro level, to anyone who speaks more than one language, fluently, will tell you, like, yes, there are things that you think about differently when you are expressing them or framing them in one language or another. And I think I notice, I notice, as Gallic turns of phrases in my English these days, I will, like I said something like, oh, yeah, I'll put that to you.
00:53:30
Speaker
which I meant, I will send that to you, but in Gallic, that's how we say it, we say I will put that to you. And just certain things that sort of, the way that I look at things, whenever I'm teaching someone basic Gallic, occasionally if a friend is interested, but like,
00:53:52
Speaker
slightly anxious I guess about trying to they like I will offer to like sit down with them and go through some basics and stuff with them and one of the things I always start with is I will put something asymmetrical in the center of the table and I will ask them to look at that from wherever they're sitting and
00:54:12
Speaker
The way I describe this is if you've got this asymmetrical object in the middle of the table, you have English and the other Germanic languages that are on sort of one corner of it, and they're all sort of looking at it from the same direction. So they have a similar view. They'll describe it similarly.
00:54:30
Speaker
You might have a couple wee differences, but especially if there's a pattern on the thing, they might not see a certain aspect of it. Then you have the Romance languages, which are also sort of clustered in their own bit, and they're not quite close to the Germanic languages. A lot of the structures, the grammar, the way that they form subject-verb,
00:54:50
Speaker
et cetera, gets put in particular orders and stuff. You've got the Scandinavian languages that are close to the Germanic languages. You've got the Slavic languages a little bit farther around. And if we're just talking European languages, you've got the Finno-Ogric languages, which are over on the other side doing their own thing. And you've got the Celtic languages, which are on the other end of the table entirely. And a lot of the
00:55:14
Speaker
ways that we frame things in the Celtic languages just are quite different to the way that people think about them in English. But the moment you can sort of say, OK, imagine looking at this thought from over here instead. And just the one simple example of that is, you know, in English, we frequently talk about having things and we are things. We like we say, I am sick or I am
00:55:44
Speaker
angry or I am jealous or all those different things or I have I have a book so Gallic we don't actually have a verb for to have so we use prepositions in Gallic in a way that really that creates a different relationship between the speaker and what they are interacting with so in Gallic a book is at me so ha ha leowad akim so and
00:56:13
Speaker
You can say, I am sick in Gallic, but if you're saying I have a cold or I have the flu, you say that sickness is on you. Emotions tend to be on you. So there's just a different way of framing where you see in sort of degrees of that as well, because if you say, Hami Fedegach, I am angry, that has a different register of intensity than HaFedegorim.
00:56:39
Speaker
like there is anger on me. So there's different aspects of that shift that go with a different relational interpretation of whatever that asymmetrical object is. In the middle, yeah. So I think with language it definitely, it does shift
00:56:59
Speaker
And I think the most important shift a lot of the time is also recognizing that these ways of thinking and the ways of expressing things are really priceless. And once we lose them, they're gone. And that's something that's really like you see that in the United States with indigenous
Art as Transfer of Feeling
00:57:13
Speaker
languages as well, where there might be only 10 remaining speakers of a language. And that's just the level of intergenerational knowledge and understanding is just so
00:57:27
Speaker
deeply priceless that losing it is, I mean, there's a reason that killing off a language on purpose is on the list of genocide symptoms. It's because of that. It's such a huge cultural
00:57:47
Speaker
So that's a big part of my life with Gallic. I find it deeply fascinating in the terms you express of how those words work and the structure of that. It's something that a lot of people don't think about. And I think to think about it, I think about in terms of art and how we express ourselves, I know that there's a deep
00:58:14
Speaker
there's a deep beauty in these unique expressions in a world that needs the drivers towards singular vocabulary description, instructions, which we know is in a certain sense necessary to limit for access. But it also kind of cuts away from any type of adventurous
00:58:38
Speaker
mind of different ways of communicating. Okay, I have to ask you this, Maya. You've written quite a few books and you sing and I'm sure there are lots of other different types of creations that you engage with. But I wanted to ask you,
00:59:06
Speaker
What what do you think art is? You know, you spend so much time in creativity and in creating discrete objects. What is what is art and why do you? Why do you why is that what you know what you do? I think for me, art and this this literally just popped into my head, so I'm going to run with it. Yes. Art is the transfer of a feeling.
00:59:35
Speaker
from one person to another. And the mode of that transfer is obviously going to be whatever shape that takes, whether it's visual art or narrative art or musical art or a combination of all of those things, because we do that. And so I think that for me, the transfer of a feeling from one person to another
01:00:05
Speaker
I think that I do it because I spent a lot of my early years not speaking. I was not fully non-verbal, as they say. Not speaking is what I would prefer to say. The other term is selective mutism. But I
01:00:29
Speaker
was very frequently stuck in my own head in a way where I didn't feel like I had the ability to convey an emotion from one mind to another. I couldn't really express in a way that I was understood and
01:00:53
Speaker
people weren't trying to understand me. So I think that I create art and I think where I found my home in stories particularly was that it was a safe place for me to explore understanding and being understood. And if I couldn't get answers or couldn't express myself in my daily life,
01:01:18
Speaker
What I could do was explore emotion and explore interaction and explore worlds.
01:01:26
Speaker
in a book where I had a safe and discreet place to sort of do that and as I've gotten older I've just realized how important that was for me and how that I'm not alone in that and how a lot of kids and a lot of people need that sort of space they need that sort of safe place to because a book you can always put it down
01:01:50
Speaker
if it takes you to a place you're not ready to go, you can always put it down. And I mean, that happened to me. I remember I was 11 years old and I attempted to read Roots by Alex Haley, which as an 11 year old, that's quite a book to pick up. And I found it, I hit a part where I like
01:02:16
Speaker
it became too real, I think, because we were living in Portland at the time in North Portland, a historically black part of the city. And I knew
01:02:34
Speaker
It just hit too close to where I lived and people I loved. And I just like, I knew that was true. And I knew, because there was also a really, really horrific white supremacist murder. What was his name? I'll try to.
01:02:55
Speaker
Was this on the IMAX? There was the IMAX on the Metro. There was eight stabbings. Oh, no, this was in 1990. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. I believe the Ethiopian immigrant. Oh, my gosh. His name is fluttering at the back of my mind. But I was very young when that happened. And I just remember that happening and having those two moments
01:03:23
Speaker
converge in my mind of just like this is still real, this still happens and that's wrong, that's not okay, but my little brain couldn't quite process that at age 11. And so I was glad I had that book.
01:03:37
Speaker
to make that connection. And also, you know, I put it down for a few years and came back to it later. But I think, you know, books and stories and art are just that book is so important. That book is so vital. And
01:03:53
Speaker
And it provides a human look into what is one of the most disturbing mass dehumanizations in history. So I think on so many different levels, an art can be an escape. They can be an escape from this world and all of those things that still are real and exist and harm people.
01:04:13
Speaker
systemic oppression and racism and homophobia and all of those different things. And they can also be windows into those things for understanding, for creating empathy, for so art for me of that transfer of a feeling from one mind to another is magic. It's our single most magical power, I think, in existence is because you can create
01:04:39
Speaker
something that evokes an emotion in someone. You can transfer that feeling to someone else via a book or a piece of art. Banksy has a surprise exhibition here in Glasgow. It's his first solo show in 14 years and I went to it last year. Yeah and he chose Glasgow for a very specific reason and he opens this exhibition. You walk into the Glasgow Museum of Modern Art and it says
01:05:07
Speaker
I know you all have seen at least one masterpiece today because you've just walked past it. And it's the Duke of Wellington statue outside of Goma, and he sits or stride a horse looking resplendent and atop his head for decades has been an orange traffic cone. And this has been an act of Glaswegian sort of. Yeah.
01:05:33
Speaker
art for the last long time and the council tries to take it down the cops try to take it down it gets put back um occasionally people will pile a whole bunch of them on there they think they got up to 10 one year and they when they took the extra ones down because it became a falling hazard they left one because they knew it would just come back they're like here's your one yeah so Banksy chose Glasgow because of this and um and the art you know Banksy's
01:06:01
Speaker
art is a very particular type of art and one thing he does that has absolutely caught fire for people and the reason he is the name that he is is because he is able to take something very very simple and that's a stencil and some paint and evoke a feeling to put a feeling from one person to another in a way that surprises people that delights people that infuriates people that you know he has
01:06:32
Speaker
has done that. And I think it's just amazing to me to see the magic of the human mind and all of these different things that are possible. So the reason I do what I do is to participate in humans, magical process of alchemy,
Portland's History with Race
01:06:52
Speaker
I suppose. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I wanted to mention, I want to pull that name,
01:07:01
Speaker
Mulligetta Surah was Ethiopian, Ethiopian immigrants. Sorry listeners for not pulling that right up. I actually, I listened recently, which is for me was surprised that my, my brain wasn't working right there. There's some, there's a podcast called that did happen here. And this, this phenomenal independently produced podcast is about anti-fascist struggles that took place in Portland, Oregon following the 1988
01:07:32
Speaker
horrific murder of Ethiopian immigrant, immigrant, uh, Mulligan to Sarah, uh, by racist skinheads, racist white skinheads. And this, uh, podcast, the story, how disparate groups use the diversity of tactics to fight neo-Nazi violence and right-wing organizing in the Rose city in the 19 eighties and nineties, which, uh,
01:07:56
Speaker
some of your contact and familiarity with the extremely complicated history that is Portland, that is Oregon, particularly around race relations. This is a great podcast, everybody listened to it. It's basically in a community radio format, but it talks about the real dynamic, one of which was described to me by a good friend of mine in the Washington, DC underground punk scene in the 90s.
01:08:24
Speaker
And just the general dynamic that these scenes, you know, these were underground scenes and these scenes were battles for influence between opposing groups. Hatred, white skinhead, intimidation, violence, killing, beating up people, eliminating difference.
01:08:45
Speaker
versus folks who were fighting and trying to clear out that scene. This was not peace sign up in the air. This was creating space for folks. So highly recommend that podcast and understand you talking about that. I have difficulty in the experience, say the Oregon, not just to drive on Oregon, it is the one state that was constitutionally set up to disallow persons of color to live here.
01:09:14
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. That's something that a lot of people really don't know about Oregon, especially with the sort of reputation of Portland these days. And I think that that's something that people don't understand really.
01:09:30
Speaker
it's not something that just goes away. It's not something that like, oh, we changed it, it's fine now. It's like, that's sort of deeply institutionalized and systemic racism is something that shapes a place and has effects that stretch into the future. And so I think that, yeah, like reckoning with that is really important. Glasgow has been doing a lot of reckoning with the history of
01:09:59
Speaker
slave trade and how Glasgow benefited hugely from money that came literally at the price of human lives and bodies. And so there's been a number of exhibitions that have come through Glasgow that have specifically looked at the canons. The names of the streets that we walk down, these people who
01:10:23
Speaker
who I've straight snamed after them, but their wealth entirely came from the transatlantic slave trade.
Literature's Role in Justice
01:10:32
Speaker
And I think that it's something that for a long time people wanted to sort of be like, oh, well, it wasn't like the South and the United States or anything like that. But like, no, actually,
01:10:43
Speaker
it just got baked into the literal landscape around us with that money. And so like, it's our responsibility to look at that and to be aware of it and to not erase that from history because it's like, it's. Yeah. And the political question is, you know, in engagement disruption, you know, I think, uh, I think in, I think in art in the sense of, you know, my, my, my approach has been, you know, I've, I've lived in, um,
01:11:10
Speaker
I haven't got around the idea that some things are simply wrong based on deep ignorance and have a really negative effect on human flourishing. It's the easiest way that I can say. It's honestly like, I always think, I just come back to just how banal it is really because it's just so
01:11:37
Speaker
it's just so counterproductive. Like I feel like all types of extreme prejudice are just also so massively counterproductive in terms of just like they're they're very basically wrong on a very simple level of just obviously this is this is this is not how you human and also like gosh just the absolute
Upcoming Book Release
01:12:02
Speaker
brain power and innovation and curiosity and things that, like, through human history, we could have created if we weren't so busy being terrible, terrible colonists and trading people. Like, I think, you know, it's just, it feels so...
01:12:23
Speaker
Just ask backwards as they say. Yes. Yes. That's our that's our technical philosophical term. Ask backwards. Yeah. Maya and I arrived at and I don't know what the Greek is for that or. Yeah, I think like that's something that I really wanted to grapple with. I'll do a segue into the other wee book I wanted to mention because I have another book coming out in the next
01:12:53
Speaker
two weeks it comes out. Yeah, tell us about it. So in 2014 I started writing the series and I really wanted to sort of grapple with
01:13:04
Speaker
climate change in a way but through a magical lens and so I've started writing this series and it's an epic fantasy that takes place in a world where this isolated community has literally weaponized the land itself to drain energy and resources from the land to the north of them and create basically a land flowing with milk and honey where they live for their own betterment and
01:13:33
Speaker
I had not actually read Le Guin's The Ones Who Walk Away From Omos Lass before I wrote this book. I haven't read that one. It's fantastic. It was very surreal reading it because it touches, it's really similarly themed to this series because this series, if you have read it, this series is sort of based on, okay, what if the ones who walked away from Omos Lass decided, okay, right, we are going to actually fix this and we are going to
01:14:03
Speaker
do the work to make this right. And the sort of basis, if you're not familiar with that story, is that there is this very prosperous city that everything is wonderful and healthy and safe. But in order for it to be healthy and wonderful and safe, there is a child who is kept in extreme pain and torture. And that child, everyone knows about this child.
01:14:33
Speaker
they live their lives with the knowledge of this child that their prosperity, their safety, their happy holidays and wonderful life is founded on the abject suffering of this single child. So it's very
01:14:54
Speaker
It's a tough read. And so the title of it is what happens when some people find out about this child and they leave and they never come back. But this series is an epic fantasy that sort of asks that same question. It was very strange since I had not read that. And then people, after they read it, they were like, oh, it's like Le Guin's. I'm like, oh, is it?
01:15:17
Speaker
But there's lots of magic and finding home in a sense of exploring your world. I'm trying to think of a good way to sum this up. I should probably just read the back of it to you. Yeah, tell us. I mean, we need to know.
01:15:38
Speaker
And it's an almost completed trilogy, so you don't have to wait, because now there's two books and then... Oh, that selling point! I need my three! So, magic forms both feast and famine.
01:15:53
Speaker
Corinne has never known hunger. Born into the hearthland, a lush world of fertile fields and abundant resources, her biggest worry is whether she and her three friends will find their true names on their journeying. But when one of them is murdered on the morning of their departure, Corinne's peaceful world is stained with blood. As they travel north, Corinne and her friends discover a horrible truth. Their lands bounty is no mystery.
01:16:16
Speaker
An ancient spell cast by their ancestors is draining the very life force from the lands across the northern mountains, weathering the earth and starving its people. Forced to confront the truth, Corinne must decide her own fate, remain silent and allow the murder of the earth itself, or risk her own life in exile and break the spell. The hearse of home have only ever nourished. Now the hearthland will see just how hot fire can burn. All choices have consequences. So,
01:16:42
Speaker
The first one is called Hearthfire and the second is called Tidewater. And then the final book in the trilogy is called Wind Taker. And it will be out on the 18th from BHC Press. All right. Well, I didn't expect to make this announcement. I might end up just shutting down something rather than nothing for a month and a half. I get to get all these books. Sorry, everybody. I never knew that a guest would come on and
01:17:07
Speaker
you know, Krita, the reading list, there has to be a show. I'm sorta kidding. The show will continue, but I have to fit in my reading. Thank you. And those are under the author name of? Emmy Meers, sorry. Yeah, I should have said that. I write other authors' names, but Emmy Meers, E-M-M-I-E-M-E-R-S.
01:17:34
Speaker
I love the sound of that too, Emmy Mears. Mears was my grandmother's maiden name. All right. All right. I wanted to, because there's no good time to ask it. I get it throughout the big clunky question about the existence of the universe and like why any of this.
01:17:51
Speaker
any of this, you know, while we're talking or anything. But the funny, profound, or annoying question is, why is there something rather than nothing? Maya, what are we up to here? What are we up to here? There is something rather than nothing because of connections. Because
01:18:20
Speaker
somewhere once upon a time a couple things bumped into each other and kept bumping into each other and more things bumped into each other and exploded and then things kept traveling and moving and across billions of years those
Existence and Human Connection
01:18:37
Speaker
things grew legs and walked on land and started to think and started to connect and interact with things around them and
01:18:46
Speaker
eventually there happened us and I've been thinking about this question a lot actually lately because we are you know made of star stuff as they say and it's actually just the literal truth like our atoms everything every part of us was forged in the violence of a birthing star and
01:19:09
Speaker
we are the universe come to life and thinking about itself. And if there's any proof that there is good in this universe, it's the fact that love exists, that the universe from the fiery heart of a star came love, came art, came justice, came the will to not allow the bad guys to win, came the desire and the
01:19:39
Speaker
impetus to affect change, to make the world better than we left it. And I think that we are all here as part of that universe having an experience of itself.
Impact of Art and Literature
01:19:54
Speaker
And I've been thinking so much lately, actually. So that's such a good question. But yeah, I think the point is connection.
01:20:02
Speaker
Well and not to not to interrupt but what you're saying there's there's a piece there my mind gets Settled to actually enjoy about is the reflection upon the self like that that idea and I mean he's obviously both I'm saying the fundamental the fundamental piece of it you saying like, you know, I always think stardust my mind says it always stardust and it's always Bowie and then like there's steps in my mind So I understand what I'm talking about outer space Bowie stardust like people um
01:20:32
Speaker
But but but just the general idea of reflection or philosophy or art, you know I do a philosophy and art show so like the reflection and And and and the energy right like you got a lot of energy I have a lot of energy like being like what's going on with this and what the hell is Oregon?
01:20:49
Speaker
And, you know, like what is, like I get to this, I go to parts of Oregon. I lived in different areas. I'm like, I know I took a time travel machine. I did. I did. Um, but, um, no, I really appreciate, uh, your thinking on that. And I, I love, you know, um,
01:21:11
Speaker
When it comes down to guessing, I just adored the arts. But for me, it's books. Books were the first thing that I had. English Lit major, I read obsessively. And there's such a power in language and what you've shown. And what I'm saying about your book,
01:21:30
Speaker
Uh, as well, it's very noticeable to me that this is an important book and that these books, you know, let's not overlook it. Like I say, I'm, this is going to go to three or four other people. As a matter of fact, I can tell you two of these folks absolutely need to know this to know that there's company.
01:21:49
Speaker
for them, this book that I'm holding and, you know, I know it's pontificating, but that's what this is. And that's a beautiful, that's a beautiful thing because you can hand it over and I look at the cover of this book and it's inviting and it's beautiful and the colors are beautiful and the story is beautiful and the art that goes into the world and does the type of work here and fuck, I love ghost stories.
01:22:16
Speaker
Those stories are so much fun and I absolutely adore
01:22:24
Speaker
the sort of genre of ghost stories as a way of understanding human connection and understanding ourselves of self-reflection. One of my favorite pieces of media in the last few years has been The Haunting of Hill House and it's such a powerful story and it is full of ghosts. There's a chockablock full of ghosts and
01:22:48
Speaker
it's such a profoundly human experience of grief and time and how we understand all of those different things that it says a lot of interesting things about time as well about ourselves going back to warn us or to help us. And yeah, I think that there's so much power in that and especially because death in Western cultures is still very much a taboo. We go through, you know, we go through it
01:23:17
Speaker
peripherally and we all get to know it over the years, but at the same time we still don't talk about it very much. And we still don't make space to talk about it very much. It still makes us very uncomfortable. But it is just something that happens and nothing is ever really created or destroyed.
Ghost Stories and Philosophy
01:23:34
Speaker
Those energies and those atoms were in the heart of a star and they're in the person now and tomorrow they'll be somewhere else. And we all sort of engage with that as we can.
01:23:46
Speaker
And I think that ghosts are a really fascinating way to do that as well. I love a ghost story. Well, yeah. And, you know, the thing is, you know, within philosophy and, you know, within, you know, that inquiry is trying to
01:24:06
Speaker
I don't, I would say like this, you know, like even traditional Western philosophy, you know, Socrates dies and there's this haunting, you know, that's through the writings of Plato who I found to be a absolutely brilliant writer, writer as writer, Plato, but talking, there's this ghost of Socrates, there's this pursuit of justice and there's death and, you know, how do we prevent a society from screwing up and
01:24:36
Speaker
killing great people, like how do we structure it? What is justice? And there's something, you know, in any of the Plato, I think there was some sort of connection to this around, you know, philosophy, me and the contemplation over death, right, of a finitude. And it's big. The ghosts, I've been deeply intrigued by ghosts. I can't think of a topic I struggle more with than death, but I just know that I do. It's way too big for my brain.
01:25:06
Speaker
And I think ghosts and stories helped me move in that area and deal with it, right?
Cultural Resiliency Through Art
01:25:15
Speaker
Yeah, it's absolutely. I think that's another aspect of books and art is understanding our world and also understanding our own experiences in that world as we navigate through things, because there's just so much
01:25:36
Speaker
so many times in our lives where we might feel really alone, we might feel like we are the first person to ever feel this feeling and we're not. We are all unique but also there have been enough similar situations to you know you have people who will understand you, who will also you know hear what you say and say oh god me too and I think that that's something that's really
01:26:05
Speaker
that books provide when you can't necessarily, even with the internet, find those people. So books can be a way, can be a bridge to finding those people a lot of the time. Yeah. And I want to thank you for your comments around, you know, and language and culture of how to be able to transmit those type of things. We think of disrupted cultures, you know, throughout, I mean, here,
01:26:31
Speaker
with indigenous cultures in the United States is that there's this resiliency, vibrancy in creation that's going on that continues and comes on as a spirit that goes forth. And I found that one thing that I know that has always been amazing is
01:26:57
Speaker
art in writing from everybody, from everybody, from everybody, because it feeds into my head and it rounds out. It's like you were talking about the object in the middle where you can see the shadows of different pieces of it and the language can approach it in different type of ways.
Supporting Authors and Pre-orders
01:27:19
Speaker
Let me see it from all around as much as possible. Okay. Where do we find, where do listeners find your books? I want to say I saw that the decorated one, the spine one is when the, I saw that book and I was like, oh my gosh, that's so, so beautiful. But where do people, whatever version of paperback, otherwise many half lived lives of Sam Sylvester.
01:27:48
Speaker
by Maya McGregor and the books by Emmy Mirrors. Where do we go?
01:27:53
Speaker
So Sam should be available or orderable in Barnes and Noble. If you're in the United States, Powell's, definitely. Any of your local indie book shops should have them. Books of Wonder in New York City, if you're on that side of the country, is a fantastic place to get their books. They actually did another one of my launch events there. They've been huge supporters of Sam Sylvester. If you're in the UK, Waterstones,
01:28:20
Speaker
There also, I believe, are still some signed copies. If you happen to be in the UK through Waterstones here, the Glasgow Waterstones has been taking care of that for me. Also, if you're in Glasgow, can't agree as books, I have to shout them out there. A local queer bookshop in the south side of Glasgow are absolutely fantastic. You can really find them just about anywhere books are sold for those ones.
01:28:46
Speaker
For the Emmy Mayors books, they are also, I believe, orderable through the bigger bookshops as well. You should be able to still order them that way. If not, my publisher's website, which is BHC Press, has buy links to all of them.
01:29:01
Speaker
and like every different retailer under the sun. And before we close off, I actually had a wee sneak peek of the next book for you. Oh, yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Very, very wee sneak peek. So this is from The Evolving Truth of Ever Stronger Will. And similar to Sam Sylvester, it stars
01:29:29
Speaker
an agender protagonist who has been dealing with a very abusive home life and the book opens with their mother dying of a heart attack in front of them. So it's no real spoiler since it happens in the first two seconds. But the very first aspect of this book, this book came about the way a lot of my books do. Sam was a wee bit different but Will started me with the first page.
01:29:57
Speaker
and a lot of my books come out that way where I will have this flash of something that I sit down I'll write the first few sentences or the first page and then I will walk away and it needs to like sit and steep for a while but Will's story is about trying to make it to their 18th birthday where they won't be put back into the system and to sort of navigate their mother's death and also process the leftover trauma whilst dealing with
01:30:25
Speaker
the fallout of their mother's life, which is fun. But it's written differently to Sam, so I actually wrote this in second person to a degree. So it's slightly more closer to the literary term in apostrophe, not the not the piece of punctuation, but a style of writing
01:30:47
Speaker
conversation with the reader almost for a very particular reason so you'll hear this but it's very much about how queer kids we often are taught that we are monstrous in some way and the world shows us that we are not wanted and that we are not safe and particularly right now this is the sentiment that is very resonant and I wrote this book in 2018
01:31:12
Speaker
and I think it's only become more resonant but so you'll you'll hear that in the first page but this book is about well breaking down that societal projection and learning self-love and learning to accept themself but here's where we start chapter one
01:31:31
Speaker
You are a monster. You know this already. It's one of the first things you learned, one of the first lessons you felt down to the cells and atoms that make you up, your electrons buzz with it. Since then, anyone who has tried to tell you otherwise, you have quietly counted among the world's many liars. You were born that way, that much, you know. They called you, well, nevermind what they called you. Your name is Will, and that's what matters now, that you found your name.
01:31:58
Speaker
People think it's supposed to be short for William or even Wilhelmina, or in one annoying case, Willard. They're wrong about that, though. Just like they're wrong about you not being a monster. Your name is Will because that's what it takes to live among people who hate you for no other reason than that you exist. So, Will. Will the monster. Here we are, and here you are. Your life is about to change. Ready? All right.
01:32:27
Speaker
Everybody buy their book. I am McGregor. It's up for pre-order.
Podcast Conclusion
01:32:33
Speaker
Up for pre-order. Hey, that pre-order is the big thing, man. You come in heavy with those pre-orders. People start smiling at you more, you know? Oh, yeah. And I think also we'll probably be doing some pre-order promotions closer to the day, but we've got
01:32:51
Speaker
Yeah, so it comes out Halloween. And this one also does have some ghosty elements to it. I love, I don't know, this is just a random thought. I love fall books. I love like, I mean, you have to get back and I get a little bit more of a school scam, a union rep for, you know, schools and stuff. But I get into that rhythm. I love the transition to my favorite season summer.
01:33:12
Speaker
and to fall and I also love like September and get around like October and I know my November books that come out and um it's like a renewal there's some tie to academics or something in my head too where it's like oh fresh stuff. Yeah and traditionally the Celtic traditions the new year started
01:33:35
Speaker
way back Celtic traditions. The new year began at Samhain, which is Halloween. And that's actually where we celebrate that comes from the old Celtic and Gallic traditions of Halloween. Wow. Wow. So I got to tell you, it's a particular thrill for me to have
01:34:03
Speaker
recently, uh, read, um, the many half lived lives of Sam Sylvester to be able to talk to you about, um, and, and just, just learning and have these great, uh, conversations. I want to thank you for, for what you do. And it is not trite or anything. I want to thank you for what, for what you do, because it has a personal relevance, uh, for me and those around me has particular relevance all the way over here in Oregon as a geographical, uh, location.
01:34:33
Speaker
and it's nice to reach you over from Scotland. I had one other guest from Scotland, Frances McKee of the Vaseline's, but I think she's the singer for the Vaseline's, and she also is a yoga practitioner, but she was from the other city that you mentioned, and I'm not doing any of that stuff because I don't know what I'm...
01:34:57
Speaker
Well, I like Edinburgh just fine. I do. I talk shit, but it's Edinburgh's fine. It's very pretty. There's one other podcast that's out of Edinburgh. Mum's Mysteries and Murder, which is a fun true crime. I've connected with them as well.
01:35:23
Speaker
I do enjoy the ability to be able to talk to you in this worldwide podcast talking about the arts. What a time to be alive. We can actually just have a conversation. And I can see you. And we use listening cats to see us, but we can see each other. And it's quite magical, honestly, that we've got a place where we can have instantaneous communication with someone on the other side of the planet. Occasionally, I just think about life. And things are rough out there. I'm not going to lie.
01:35:53
Speaker
Also, we live in a time of magic as well. So. Yeah. And, you know, it's not ideal. It's not perfect. The online world is something. But as far as community building, you know, to know. Right. Yeah. Just this week's Twitter.
01:36:10
Speaker
Twitter, fire. Yeah, I'll not say anything more than that. I'll just throw my rock across the rim. Yeah, that does it. That does it. The rock is enough. I really appreciate it.
01:36:25
Speaker
Absolutely. I will steadfastly pre-order anybody interested in things for authors and musicians or the pre-order tab for them. If you want to get it, even if you can get it, you can afford to get it. That's how you get more of the things you like.
01:36:51
Speaker
who make the things happen that you want them. That's how you get more of what you like, your pre-order things you like. Great. Thank you so much, Miami McGregor. Thank you. Thank you for your stories. And gosh, I know we probably had another three hours in us if we wanted to, but we'll leave that for the future. But I'm just really wishing you a beautiful day and thank you for your time on something rather than nothing.
01:37:21
Speaker
Thanks very much for having me it's been a pleasure. Absolutely. This is something rather than nothing.