It’s July 9th, which means it’s the launch day of my debut novel, Speak the Ocean.
It’s been a long road here. StO started as a gender-bent YA with a boy who couldn’t speak because he was always wearing a snorkel. It wasn’t a horrible idea, but it didn’t spark anything in me, either. It was a beginning, based on a really cool science story about a petrified forest of tree stumps in the Gulf of Mexico. I couldn’t make it work, so I started writing it from end to beginning, using my background in fisheries biology, and that’s when it finally sparked.
When I saw the documentary, BLACKFISH, about Orcas forced to perform for human entertainment, it had a profound effect on me. It took me three days to watch, because I kept crying so hard I had to stop it. And all I could think about was: “What if they looked more human? Would we care then?”
But mermaid myths throughout the ages do give a glimpse into our psyche of “different is deadly”, and real world events do give a glimpse into how far we’ll go to deny humanity to anyone we decide isn’t human.
And you can’t argue that humans value entertainment over everything.
Even I still want to swim with dolphins someday.
So, today is a long way from where I started: a boy who thought he saw a tarpon stuck in a net. That “tarpon”-mermaid showed him a petrified forest that doesn’t exist anymore, but used to millennia ago.
And then Erie showed both Finn and me how to be better humans than we were.
While ripping people’s necks out.
They deserved it.
My next post will have all the buy-links and such, but for now: Speak the Ocean. Speak the Land. Speak the Air.
Don’t be silent about what matters to you.
And absolutely, 100%, Humanize the Mer.
