In the Vanishers’ Palace by Aliette de Bodard

So I had to make a decision: I could stick it in a drawer for the time being, or I could try self-publishing it. It also ended up being a decidedly awkward length (novel-length but too short for fantasy novel publishers). It helped me find joy and meaning in writing again. And that helped me claw my way out of the hole.

And it wasn’t always feelgood to write: in fact, it was downright uncomfortable, because it ended up being such a weighty and personal story, because I drew on so much that meant so much to me. Obviously I don’t do fun and frothy very well, because I seem to have ended up with a postcolonial, postapocalyptic Beauty and the Beast, where both are women and the Beast is a dragon (because dragons, and because f/f relationships in SFF need more happy endings!), and where spirits and humans alike are struggling to survive in a world ruined by their former masters. A book that I’d feel like sinking into for pleasure: a queer retelling of Beauty and the Beast, except in a setting inspired by Vietnamese folklore–drawing from all those stories my mother and grandmother told me, the ones with scholar-magicians and dragons and k ỳ lân and rooster spirits, where words had the weight of magic. So I decided to write something just for me.

But also, stopping writing would have been about as easy as stopping to breathe. I could tell I was going to crash and that it wasn’t going to be pretty when it did happen. I could tell I was flirting with burnout, because I’d had it before in other settings. I was exhausted, dealing with health issues and a bunch of kids-related anxiety–and writing had just stopped being fun.

In the Vanishers’ Palace by Aliette de Bodard