4 days out!

The ward screamed at my temples wanting to keep me inside, keep me safe, if only I listened. I stepped outside the ward’s boundaries and the ward tried to reach me, reach outside its wall crying out like every mother who’s cautioned their child in high places, and then the ward shattered into a million pieces.
© 2019 Olivia Orndorff

5 days out! Beginning of the teaser countdown ;)

They weren’t dreams. Never dreams. Just voices lingering in my mind, faint echoes of souls I now carried, drifting out to play when my walls lifted. I heard them, the cant of the wards, the Vietnamese of a sailor. Only one’s voice spoke in my childhood Creole. A lullaby that soothed me deeper and deeper into darkness.
© 2019 Olivia Orndorff

Your first sneak-peek of the book! 3 weeks to go!!

The woman hadn’t moved from the door as she assessed the room. She felt wilder to me. Like marionberries growing from the cracks of an abandoned building, stretching out toward the sky for sun. Tasted, tasted slightly bitter, though familiar, aged.

I felt her gaze seep into my bones, as the very cells of my blood threatened to boil over.

Last time Eliza Wong and I had been in the same room, she had tried to kill me and almost succeeded.
© 2019 Olivia Orndorff

Need something to tide you over until release date? Looking to check out one of my other books?

You’re in luck! My e-books on Smashwords are currently name your price (that does mean free) or pick them up for $0.99 on all other e-book retailers, or a discounted price for paperback.
Just remember authors love your reviews!

Cover now up and here’s the back blurb. We’re getting close!

My caretaker used to tell me stories, as caretakers do, of when the world was new. When the world was made up of continents and not islands; of nations, not cities; when people traveled in the air, outracing sound, over water; when healers worked not with their hands, but with machines.

She told me of the sun shining, of the snow burying the world in white, of animals kept as family—of families, not clans, tribes or corporations. Of a world without magic. Without gene modification. Without pollution covering the sky. Without people like me.
When the world was new.

But that, as she always ended every story, every phrase, every glance, was a very, very long time ago.

Secrets dominate Rue’s life in post-apocalyptic Chicago. When her past comes and swings around old favors for Rue’s help, Rue can no longer hide in the shadow pretending she is a powerless, normal human—a dud. Instead, she will have to lose carefully earned control and cause some damage in order to save her new lover and old family.
© 2019 Olivia Orndorff

It’s been quiet on the blog and twitter (truthfully, I’m always quiet on twitter), but hopefully this post makes up for it!

Here is the cover for my next book Don’t Belong to No City, which takes place in futuristic Chicago. The first book in an entirely new series!

Mark your calendars for the release date on May 24. Perfect for your Memorial day weekend!

I can’t wait to share my new story with you! Check back in for excerpts and other fun surprises leading up to the release date.

I recently finished Perfect Me: Beauty as Ethical Ideal by Heather Widdows. Widdows positioned the idea of beauty and the process of beautifying women invest so much time in through the lens of philosophical critic. Her claim is that the standards of beauty continues to evolve and envelop every woman (and soon man) to a look that is achievable only by using make-up and only by going under the knife. This isn’t a book that spends its time trying to dwell on how the individual participates but more at the overarching swell where women continually find the marker of internal self-worth is linked to physical appearance. Her connections across history of how strict beauty standards (e.g. binding feet) were limited to one socio-economic class, and how that is rapidly changing. As the world changes, the gap has gotten narrower and narrower. Women now, in the book, are expected to wear makeup at the gym, at home, and even while battling terminal diseases. Her examples are specific and while skewed toward western Europe and America also incorporate the changing global identity as well—particularly the idea of thinness.

Her discourse struck a chord with me. Even an individual, setting out not to wear make-up, or not to use a filter with a photo, becomes an investment of time and emotional energy comparable, or more so, to those who stay within the current. Examining the beauty standard does not rest on the individual, but on the society as a whole to examine why this ephemeral idea of beauty and of youth is so intrinsically skewed to inherent value. Reading her work, I found another reminder to check my own values and weigh them against why exactly “a bad hair day” seems to strike such a dismal mood so quickly. Why I am willing to pay x amount of money for a manicure or a pedicure before a big event? Why do so many young women ask for, and receive from their guardians, cosmetic procedures on their 18 birthdays? Why do women who struggle to pay for rent, food, still fork over money for hair dye? Why do I shave my legs? The answer is simple, cultural norms tell me (and them) it is expected. Not participating results in its own tagline. Letting yourself go. Not being the best you.

As Widdows puts it, this cultural trap of not participating means not believing in betterment, not believing that getting better by the careful mascara wand would result in stagnation.  Truthfully, I rarely wear makeup and am often envious of those around me able to wield their tools with mastery for the perfect look. But, I am also aware of the way it can hinder, and can trap time, effort, and mental and physical health and spiral talented women downward by not keeping up.

This is not, perhaps a new revelation (though the increasing number of cosmetic procedures was), but Widdows provides a new frame to my thinking as she shows how common practices, increasingly complex ones, begin to be woven into the fabric of everyday care and how women continually police themselves and others. This is not really about finding that heterosexual relationship. This is about the normative practice (encouraged by patriarchy and capitalized on by a global market) that slowly increases to fulfill and ever growing need to meet a standard that is not achievable. A standard linked to the idea of worth.  

Widdows helps answer the question of why culture tell us to tie our self-worth, our public personas, to masks, to the future person that is ten pounds lighter, and hair the perfect shade, and our skin without wrinkles. What I wonder though is how best we start untangling the idea of value from the mirror.

The older I get, aka the more Chicago winters I experience, the more I identify with the lion, the witch and the wardrobe, where the villain keeps Narnia in endless winter and never Christmas. There is something about the trudge of January and February, and the false promise of March, that keeps me on the edge of my seat watching to see when the lake will finally melt, when the flowers will start to bloom and I can finally put away my coat. Week by week we’re getting there. Last week, I walked along the lakefront and the ice had begun to melt in chunks. The remaining pieces clinked together like musical breaking glass. I put away my down coat and go around bravely without a hat or scarf. Soon, spring will be here and I will once again be reminded of how glad I am that, once again, the seasons change.

I finshed off E. K Johnston's book That Inveitable Victorian Thing, my first story from this author, and enjoyed the story. More then anything I loved the concept of an alternative future where the world is perhaps not so scarred by colonialism. My main complaint was how short the novel was. I hope the author ventures into this world again. In the notes, the author remarks the idea came from asking "what-if" the world was not quite so terrible.

The more I read, the more I write, the more I find stories come from this question. A question of how reality could be differnt. Like a mirror, some books only require a slight twist. Then others are more like fun houses--twisted perceptions. That's always the first choice on the part of the author, the distortion. The second, and one I'm struggling with, is how to orient the reader to that twist. Should it be a kick off the high-dive or a gentle immersion? I've read both ways and enjoyed floundering, working to keep up with the charcters--but, the story has to really engage me or I have to trust the author. Like with this book I finished, the read is easier when I already had my bearings.

Any thoughts, fellow book-lovers?