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Teghan Hammond and Mel Hammond are sisters who grew up punching each other whenever they saw a P.T. Cruiser, dying their hair blue together, and fabricating a fake band in which their middle brother was (allegedly) the lead singer. Writing Lucy, Uncensored was their first time co-writing. Unless you count the summer they spent scribbling down recipes for the strangest sandwiches you’ve ever heard of, like the Tax Exemption Wrap (Teghan) and the Nail Gun Sandwich (Mel).

Today, Teghan lives in northern Indiana, where she drinks excessive amounts of coffee and volunteers for LGBTQIA+ causes. When she’s not tearing down gender norms, Teghan is probably watching cartoons or gaming. Mel lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where she writes books in a rainbow-painted room. Besides writing, she loves walking in the woods and eating dairy-free ice cream. Between the two of them, Teghan and Mel have four adorable cats.

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Transcript
00:00:01
Speaker
You are listening to something rather than nothing. Creator and host Ken Volante. Editor and producer Peter Bauer.

Introduction and collaboration on 'Lucy Uncensored'

00:00:17
Speaker
Hey everybody, this is Ken Vellante with the Something Rather Than Nothing podcast and super excited to have Mel and Tegan working on a book together, but also to chat about, you know, writing, art, philosophy. So I wanted to welcome you both, Mel and Tegan, to the Something Rather Than Nothing podcast. Thanks, Ken. We're excited to be here.
00:00:45
Speaker
Yeah. Tell us about the book. Tell us what you can about the book and working together.
00:00:52
Speaker
We can tell you everything about the book. Oh my gosh, where did we start? Okay, so our book is called Lucy Uncensored and it's a young adult novel about a transgender teenager who's a senior in high school and a drama nerd. And she and her best friend have this plan to go to their state college, which has a great drama program.
00:01:20
Speaker
and be roommates and do plays together. And then when Lucy goes to visit, some transphobic stuff happens and she realizes that she might need a bigger change after growing up in this area and being around people who
00:01:42
Speaker
will always know her past and will know that she just transitioned a couple years ago. So she starts to think, how can I get a true fresh start?

Lucy's journey and queer-friendly college exploration

00:01:54
Speaker
So she finds this
00:01:57
Speaker
women's college um down south and at first she's like uh i did not know women's colleges still existed um but as she digs in she realizes that it's a super queer friendly school and it has an amazing theater program even though it's quite a small school
00:02:18
Speaker
And so she convinces her best friend Callie to skip out on their responsibilities in the theater and at school and go on a secret road trip to this college for their prospective students weekend. And shenanigans ensue. And basically it's a friendship story and it's about Lucy's journey to figure out
00:02:44
Speaker
how to be yourself and how to exist as a proud trans woman in the world. Yeah, it's a story that's needed. It's really, really exciting to hear about
00:03:03
Speaker
I had an author on Maya McGregor who did the Many Half-Lived Lives of Sam Sylvester, which is a really important book for me and a great writer.
00:03:21
Speaker
Tegan, you're newer to the, you know, working on the on the book. I think Mel's done some some other books like about the process of working together. Like, what was what was that? What was that like for you? And how did it go? I think it was very unique. This is like the first the first book I ever worked on.
00:03:50
Speaker
Um, and it was like very new to me. Um, so a lot of it, I felt like I was just kind of following Mel's lead. Um, like when we, when we first started, it was like a two perspective novel. Um, so I was writing, um, in like Lucy's voice, Mel was writing in Cali, the best friend's voice.
00:04:23
Speaker
And I kind of just like learned to write as I was going. And it was really cool because I could like read what Mel was writing and like get that voice and incorporate Callie's voice into my chapters and then Mel could do the same with like me creating Lucy's voice
00:04:50
Speaker
And then that just kind of made it a lot easier when we combined it into one perspective, because we already knew each other's voices. I was already basing a lot of my writing on Mel because she's a great author. And so it really just came together really naturally. It was really great.

Tegan's artistic journey from science to writing

00:05:20
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it's wonderful to hear. I want to ask about, just like at this point too, one of the questions I ask is, and this will be for each one of you, but I'll ask you now, Tegan.
00:05:34
Speaker
When did you see yourself as an artist or as a writer, like your journey with art? Some folks just kind of wake up or born and be like, yo, this is what I'm going to do. No doubt about it. For you, how did that feel? Is that something that already happened? Or do you feel like you're becoming a writer, you were a writer, an artist when you were doing it? Yeah.
00:06:03
Speaker
Um, I was very much like, like a math and science kid growing up. Um, very, very nerdy. My only extra curricular really was, um, it was science based, like competitive, um, science events. And so I was very much like, Oh, I'm
00:06:30
Speaker
you know, like, right-brained, like, I'm not really good at art. The only class I ever got a D.N. in high school was an art class. And I was like, I don't even know how I made it to that. Yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah. So I very much was like, oh, I'm not an artist. Like, Mel got
00:06:59
Speaker
those genes and then I got like genes from our grandfather. And so I think really this book kind of started that journey of like, oh, at first it was like, oh, I enjoy writing. It was more to me about connecting with Mel.
00:07:30
Speaker
Um, then like creating a story or creating art or anything like that. Um, it was really just for us. Um, and then once we'd been working on it for a few years, I had the opportunity to, um, go back to college, um, and ended up taking
00:08:00
Speaker
a creative writing course because I was like, I really like have enjoyed working on this book. And so like just sometime during that course where I was like reading different works and like writing some smaller pieces, I really like could see myself like writing
00:08:31
Speaker
long-term and really, really took that as like a piece for my identity. And yeah, I would say that's when I really started thinking like, oh, I am like an artist in my own way. Yeah, there's something, I mean, sometimes the question seems like super profound, but sometimes there's like,
00:08:58
Speaker
just this, just this switch or something, you know, and then like how it inhabits your personality.

Mel's writing career and impactful children's books

00:09:04
Speaker
Mel, you've been writing some books for some time and I saw the books you were writing like in some like important topics for young readers too, like body image and that. Mel, can you take us through like your, you know, like your art, you know,
00:09:24
Speaker
when you saw yourself as an artist and as far as writing, you cover some important things that you've been doing for a little while. How you go about it and what pressure or responsibility you feel around conveying healthy thinking, healthy attitudes, that type of thing. So I was just wondering.
00:09:49
Speaker
Yeah, so I'll start with the first question about when I saw myself as an artist. I have always seen myself as an artist. I decided I wanted to be a writer when I was three before I even knew how to write, so I don't know where I got that idea.
00:10:08
Speaker
I loved books and before I could spell or write any words, I would have my mom staple together paper into a book and then I would go through and I would draw pictures on each page and then I would dictate to my mom
00:10:28
Speaker
what the words should say and she would write it down. So I was making these books from when I was three. And somehow I never strayed from that goal. I always wanted to be an author. When I was young, I hoped to be an illustrator too. And I did pursue art through high school and college.
00:10:49
Speaker
But I was a better writer and writing came a lot easier to me. So now I just do visual art for fun. But yeah, I stuck with writing from age three until now. So I went to graduate school for children's literature, like studying it critically. And I went to grad school because I didn't really know how to
00:11:19
Speaker
incorporate writing into my work. Of course, I wanted to be an author, but you can't really get a job doing that. At least I didn't know you could. So I continued writing on the side and I joined writing groups and was writing really diligently while I had a full-time job as a technical writer for a healthcare IT company.
00:11:43
Speaker
And I did that for about five years. And then I got a job in children's publishing at American Girl, which if folks don't know, it's a company that creates dolls and books and toys for kids. And their books are really cool. They started as a historical fiction
00:12:13
Speaker
book publishing company. So a lot of folks who are from Tegan and I's generation will have grown up with them, even if they didn't read the books as a kid. I didn't read the books as a kid, but I wish I had because they're really fun and really educational. And then American Girl moved into doing more contemporary literature and nonfiction. So I was hired as a nonfiction
00:12:38
Speaker
editor, which also included writing a few of the books. So I wrote a book about pets, one about climate change called Love the Earth, and then one about body image. And I took those assignments very seriously, because these books are for kids who are about 8 to 12 years old, or for the body image book, ages 10 and up. And that is such a formative time. And
00:13:08
Speaker
kids are learning a lot and they are turning into the people they're going to become. And that information can spark a career goal or it can spark activism. It can spark like a big piece of someone's identity. So I take writing for kids very, very seriously because of that, which sometimes
00:13:36
Speaker
makes it hard because when you're writing a book about climate change for The rising generation that is gonna have to deal with the mess of climate change. That's a lot of pressure so I did sometimes I felt like the fate of the world was in my hands not to be dramatic, but I'm really proud of that book and a thing with body image that book did get a lot of
00:14:03
Speaker
news when it came out. Unfortunately, it was picked up by right wing media and they totally trashed the book because it acknowledges the existence of transgender children and people are really mad about that. So the book is no longer available. But despite all that, I'm extremely proud of it. And I've heard from
00:14:31
Speaker
young people and adults who have read the book and say like it changed their perspective on their body and made them feel so much more empowered just to exist in the world as a person with a body. And that is life changing. I grew up with a lot of body image issues and I wrote the book that I wish I had had as a kid. And so knowing that,
00:14:59
Speaker
Even though I made a lot of people mad, well, maybe I'm fine with certain groups of people being mad. I don't regret what I wrote. But knowing that it influenced people and changed people's minds about their bodies in a good way makes me really proud. So now I'm a freelance author, and Lucien Censored is my
00:15:30
Speaker
my first young adult novel. And I also write middle grade, but I don't have anything published in that genre yet. And then I do some work for higher educational children's books as well.
00:15:47
Speaker
Right. I, um, on thanks for, for writing that now and hearing, you know, the story about the attacks on the, you know, we see that horse shit so much nowadays, you know, where, you know, uh, this, this type of aggressive, I don't know, policing, uh, hate. And, um, it's, it's, it's important for you to, uh, to written that too. I, I in my life have,
00:16:16
Speaker
been around many men and women with, you know, body image issues, many of them really super silent and just knowing me knowing that and it

Intentions and representation in 'Lucy Uncensored'

00:16:29
Speaker
takes it takes courage for both of you to write about what you do. And I wanted to ask about Lucy on Uncensored and can you just tell folks like
00:16:44
Speaker
right when it's coming out and if you have like the tour or appearance, I mean, I know it's, you know, things along those lines. But also related to that, what do you want the book to, what do you want the book to do? Like, what do you, what do you, what do you, what would you like to see that make you satisfied as authors knowing you don't have control over? Yeah.
00:17:13
Speaker
So first, the book is coming out October 8th. We will be having launch parties in Madison and Fort Wayne for sure, but we don't have like definite details yet. And as far as like the bigger question, I think for me, like,
00:17:44
Speaker
Being transgender, when I was growing up, there wasn't really much exposure for me. I had very limited knowledge of the whole idea of transitioning, and none of it was
00:18:12
Speaker
in a positive light. I wasn't hearing the stories of trans people talking about their experiences and identities. It was very sensationalized, just very negative. And that was really damaging for me. Because as soon as I
00:18:43
Speaker
As soon as I heard the word transgender, I was like, oh, that's it. That's what I've been feeling all these years. But it immediately came with so much stigma that I was like, I can't act on this or tell anyone at all. And that stuck with me for years and years and years until I was in college, met other trans people.
00:19:14
Speaker
felt like I was able to express myself more. And so it was a real journey for me. And so I think for me, I want to have more stories from like
00:19:42
Speaker
queer and trans people out there, especially for like young adult, middle grade ages, people who are like figuring out their identities and like trying to see it in a positive light. So I really want to like give that to kids who are
00:20:11
Speaker
questioning their gender, and also dealing with the issues that young trans people come into. I feel like every trans person has the same sort of battles within themselves.
00:20:33
Speaker
about things like passing privilege and like being open and proud of your own identity, which are like really big topics that Lucy Uncensored covers. Yeah, so I think I just want to give that to our readers. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much.
00:21:03
Speaker
And it's good to hear Madison. I mentioned to you before, I lived in Wisconsin for 12 years, Madison for about 10, a city that I love and also
00:21:19
Speaker
having your book there. Part of this is for the listeners. We're doing this way up ahead of time. I'm there in Paul's books. The idea is for an important book that you worked on together.
00:21:35
Speaker
get the word out there. I do an independent podcast here. And I frame it as art, philosophy, and liberation. And it's not just to be like that. But for me, the space has to do with
00:21:54
Speaker
artists and creators and people, you know, being themselves and doing important work. And I see the work that you're doing very important. The only problem is having to wait to the fall. But I love fall books. I love when the books start coming in in the fall after the summer. Mel, your sense of, you know, like with, you know, the intent of the book and
00:22:21
Speaker
you know kind of like what what impact and you know getting this book out there uh what's been that what how's that been like yeah i i want to echo everything tegan said um i think that
00:22:42
Speaker
underrepresented voices in publishing, especially in books for young people, are so important. This has been a white privileged cisgender genre for so many years.

Collaborative writing process and challenges

00:23:01
Speaker
Kids need to see themselves and they need to see diverse voices in books.
00:23:08
Speaker
I'm such a big supporter of organizations like We Need Diverse Books, who they're doing so much work to help get more diverse books into the world and into kids' hands. So I'm just so honored that Tegan was willing to go on this journey with me. Obviously, on my own, I would not
00:23:35
Speaker
write a book about a trans character because I'm cisgender and that's not my experience. But being able to partner with Tegan on this to bring an important book into the world and for me to be able to share my writing experience and combine that with Tegan's
00:23:52
Speaker
lived experience as a trans person has just been really wonderful. So I'm excited for kids to get their hands on this book. Of course, I also wanted to be a really fun, entertaining, moving book. I think
00:24:10
Speaker
at its heart. It's a friendship story. It's not just an identity story. And Callie and Lucy, the main characters, are fictional, but in a way they are
00:24:25
Speaker
Tegan and I. It's a very personal book in a lot of ways. Tegan, can I go into some more of the context around us writing it?
00:24:42
Speaker
So besides the impact that I hope it has on readers, ultimately, no matter what happens with this book, no matter what the reception is, it is the most meaningful
00:24:58
Speaker
piece of writing or art I've ever worked on. And that's because Tegan and I came together to work on this during the hardest time of our lives. Tegan was incarcerated at the time, and we were really limited in our communications.
00:25:18
Speaker
Tegan was in Indiana. I'm in Wisconsin. And so it was a road trip to be able to visit her. And talking on the phone was tough too. We had
00:25:34
Speaker
15 minutes to talk and It was always loud and it was hard to hear and it was Yeah, it was awful. Um The emails that we were allowed to send were expensive which that wasn't the main issue the the main issue is it cut cuts you off after a certain number of words, so it just felt like it was so hard to connect and We were
00:26:04
Speaker
we were separated by forces outside of our control. And so I just was looking for a way for us to connect. And so we came up with this idea. I don't even remember. Maybe it might've been my idea and I pitched it to Tegan and she was like, yeah, I've got nothing to do. Let's write a book.
00:26:33
Speaker
So a funny thing about prison is there
00:26:39
Speaker
The only thing we were allowed to send Tegan was paperback books directly from Amazon. I couldn't send any other kinds of gifts besides commentary money. And so I was sending her all these queer YA books. And so she was reading a lot. And eventually we were like, we could do this. So
00:27:07
Speaker
we started working on it. And we kind of started working on it aimlessly. We didn't have an overarching plot in mind. We just were writing fun scenes. And Lucy and Callie, these characters were the stand-ins for us in a way. And so even though we couldn't
00:27:28
Speaker
go on a road trip and and go to college parties and like go thrift shopping together or put on a play together our characters could so it was it was this way for us to connect on an alternate plane and so Tegan would hand write chapters
00:27:50
Speaker
and mail them to me in prison issue envelopes and then I would type them up into a Google Doc and then I would write my own chapters and I would email all that back to her and it was sometimes ridiculous because since the emails cut you off at a certain word count like they would come in like
00:28:10
Speaker
multiple parts but sometimes she would get like part three immediately and then she wouldn't get part one until like the next week so I'm sure it was very frustrating on her end but I mean at the at the end of it I have this whole finder full of the handwritten chapters that she wrote and I had the whole Google Doc full of
00:28:39
Speaker
both of our chapters combined. And by the time she came home in 2021, we were like, let's finish this thing. And so we did, and now it's going to be a real book in the world. And so that is such a gift and just feels so special. It's like the novel of the making of a novel.

Philosophical discussion: Why is there something rather than nothing?

00:29:02
Speaker
I mean, just working hard to
00:29:06
Speaker
working hard to create at a certain point, it just, I mean, not speaking for you. I mean, you got through it. You're like, we got to keep, you know, doing this. And I don't like to read two chapters ahead, but you know, I'll have to, you know, you know,
00:29:23
Speaker
get through that. All right, I had to ask a couple conceptual questions because it'd be worth kicking around. Continue with you, Mel, and then Tegan. What is art? What is art? What is it?
00:29:40
Speaker
So for me, I think of art as something that you create to change someone else in some way. So it could be to change someone else's perspective or to create empathy in a new way with someone. So what I'm really drawn to in writing is
00:30:05
Speaker
really digging deep into my character and communicating their unique perspective to the reader. And I want that unique perspective to change the reader in some way. It doesn't have to be a huge change. They don't need to change their political party.
00:30:23
Speaker
I mean, they can't if they want, but they don't have to drop everything they're doing and change career paths or anything. But even if it's just a little change, they think about something in a new way or they are empathetic towards an experience that they weren't before. That is art to me.
00:30:42
Speaker
Yeah. I love that. Uh, Tegan, what, what's, what's our, and that, gosh, I mean, you had the D back in the day, which can happen to anybody, even the best of artists. Some say you got to get a DNR to be a good art, but what, what is it? What's our, what's art for you? Um, so.
00:31:05
Speaker
For me, as I was toying with this question, I was thinking about language gaps. I can describe something as red, and you can agree it's red, but there's no way to communicate what our views of red are. There's no words for that.
00:31:33
Speaker
And I feel like a lot of times it's the same with our emotions. I can say I'm sad, I can describe physical feelings, but I feel like there's a big language gap around my experience with certain emotions as compared to everyone else's. And I feel like art is really just
00:32:00
Speaker
the way we bridge that language gap, the way we show our emotions in a way that transcends any language, which I know is ironic because we're writers. But no matter how many words you use to try to describe an emotion, I don't think it ever has the same
00:32:29
Speaker
emotional message as like a whole story. You can like feel those emotions a lot more. I think that's true, like writing, visual arts, music, like any sort of thing is just a way of really connecting with our emotions and sharing them.
00:32:55
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I found that really powerful the way you had to say that, particularly with like the language gap. And for me, thinking about emotions, right, I think about books for sure. But I also think about songs like my emotion is.
00:33:12
Speaker
this singer screaming that thing out, and that's how I get it. I don't know how it's like anger, sadness, confusion, like that, but they do it. And I connect with art, particularly books and music in that way. That means a lot. And I think emotions are so, they could be so difficult to convey. Like there's a lot in art, it's like, how do I,
00:33:41
Speaker
How do I show this weird feeling or demonstrate it? I'm going to knock out one more big philosophy question as well, just to knock out the big philosophy questions. I'm going to jump back over to you, Mel. This is the one that's the titular question to show is, why the heck is there something rather than nothing? All right. I would think about this one, because at first I was stumped. I'm like, oh my god, what am I going to say? Yeah.
00:34:09
Speaker
It's been a good question to think about. And I realized it's a question I've thought about before, just in a different way.
00:34:18
Speaker
And I think that there is something because we create the something as humans. We look around at our surroundings and we name things and we create concepts and we make art about things and we create meaning in our own lives.
00:34:40
Speaker
And I don't believe that meaning exists inherently in nature. I think we create that meaning. And so in a way we create the world. Not damn. I don't have the mic drop sound effect here. Um, I'm getting used to the drums here. I was going to do that. Uh, Tegan, uh, weird ass, weird ass question. Uh, why is there something rather than nothing? Um,
00:35:10
Speaker
So I actually thought about this a while ago. Back when I was in college, I took philosophy. And the answer I came up with at the time was, it's just arbitrary. It just is. There's no reason for it. But then getting ready for this podcast, I definitely came back to that question. And the answer I came up with is very similar to Mel's.
00:35:39
Speaker
It is something that we create. In physics, we know the universe is infinitely expanding. I kind of connect that back to a statistic I heard a while ago. I don't know if it's true.
00:36:09
Speaker
at some point on YouTube, people were uploading more content than there existed time. One person would have to have 17 different videos playing at the same time constantly to try to keep up with content that was being created. And I think that's really
00:36:37
Speaker
It's really the same sort of concept. People are filling time with experiences beyond time that exists. The same way people are creating more books than you could possibly ever read, more music than you could ever listen to. And it's kind of just this exponential growth that people keep adding to each generation.
00:37:07
Speaker
of just creativity. Um, I think that's kind of been going on forever creating that something. Yeah. I really, I really enjoyed both, uh, both your answers and, uh, you know, um, really excited to hear about the book. I, um, I had to just coming off yesterday, I had to, uh, interview. I was super excited about with, um,
00:37:34
Speaker
MJ Bassett and she transitioned in 2017, famous
00:37:41
Speaker
Like movie director did like Solomon Kane in Rogue and is doing the new Red Sonya movie from like Conan universe. But what's really cool is I was able to talk to MJ about she's welding in some themes about climate change and such into this like kind of warrior fantasy, you know, kick ass Red Sonya character. And I'm like,
00:38:07
Speaker
damn i can't wait to see this can't wait to see this to see this movie so i was really excited to have that interview just yesterday and been trying to um get mj on for a while but i i really want to um
00:38:22
Speaker
to thank you both. I get into the creation of the book thing. I was interested in deeply thinking about a lot of things you had to say, but making a book feel so fucking impossible sometimes, or getting the art piece out, and it's like the pandemic.
00:38:44
Speaker
the struggles you went through. When I work with artists and talk to artists, I'm like, congratulations on doing this thing. Like I said, as part of the show, I love to have listeners come into contact with, I get excited about new books and I'm excited about your book and can see it over there in Madison and all around the country. So congratulations on what you've done.
00:39:14
Speaker
Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. It's an incredible accomplishment. Um, all right. So we covered some about the book and before I let you go, um, any other places, and this is totally your discretion, like places to come in contact with your art, your writing, the publishing, like any of that type of stuff that listeners should totally know.
00:39:38
Speaker
Yeah, my website is malhammondbooks.com, and Tegan is on there as well. So it has my name on it, but you can consider it both of our websites at this time. We also have a joined TikTok account at Hamtastic Duo, and we're
00:40:02
Speaker
posting videos about our writing process and just some funny ones about the book. And once the cover is revealed, which should be soon, we'll reveal it there. And you can find me on Instagram at hamsandwichmel. Anything to add Tegan? Nothing.
00:40:25
Speaker
Tegan's a little more social media invisible. Hey, visible through you and as needed in the art creation. Thanks again to you both. Really, really happy to
00:40:41
Speaker
contact you and meet with you out there in the Midwest from Oregon. It's sunny today. I'm recording this so I can say in the times out here where it's constantly raining that I can listen myself say, the sun is shining on me and it is. Thank you so much, both of you, for coming on to the show. Really enjoyed chatting with you.
00:41:08
Speaker
super excited for the book and it'll be out before before we know it but let's uh folks uh lucion censored and the thing is uh listeners uh pre-order you know when the stuff comes up pre-order the book ask your bookshop to get it that's the way to get it out there so there's no
00:41:27
Speaker
I know of no advocacy on behalf of authors to get their books in the store that should be turned away. So, best of luck to you and thanks again for coming on the show. Thanks, Ken. This was really fun. You're welcome. Take care. This is something rather than nothing.
00:42:00
Speaker
and listeners to stay connected with us in our guests, visit something rather than nothing.com. Join our mailing list for exclusive updates and access to guest created art. If you enjoyed this episode or any episode, please like subscribe, leave a review on your podcast platform. People really read that shit.
00:42:21
Speaker
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00:42:49
Speaker
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