Last week, many Americans, including myself, got sucker punched right in the heart. Since then, we’ve floated in an awful, nauseating realm of fear and loathing, while receiving this oft-repeated and well-intentioned advice:

• accept outcomes
• focus on the positive
• dole out love and kindness to all
• forgive
• hope
• care about America

But you know what? I don’t feel like doing any of those things. If you’re familiar with me at all, you know that I usually focus on gratitude and respect, but right now, I don’t want to. In fact, I’m doing just the opposite. As my fury-clouded mind swirls in a sea of despair, I find myself making comprehensive mental lists of everything I hate about humans. And although that is where my thoughts keep going, the exercise doesn’t help in the least.

A friend once told me this story: after the sudden death of someone he dearly loved, he made a list of all the people he wished had died instead. After completing that task, his reflections were as follows: (1) the list was way too long, and (2) writing down all those names made him feel like shit. His conclusion, once it was all over, was that he would’ve been far better off making a list of all the people he loved.

In the spirit of learning from someone else’s mistakes, I will now take a few moments to push aside the desire to create a really long, comprehensive hate list, and will try instead to make a different kind of list.

Here we go ~

A Different Kind of Hate List (aka: Things I Love)

• Cornbread & collard greens
• Warm blankets on cold nights
• Funny cat video compilations
• Water droplets on spiderwebs
• Hugging my dogs (I read something recently that said dogs don’t like being hugged, but my dogs told me that’s bullshit)
• Lions, skulls, and dragons
• S’mores
• When people trip and fall (without hurting themselves, of course. I’m not a monster.)
• Train whistles and church bells
• Those videos of military folks coming home to surprise their kids/dogs
• Finding little bridges in the woods
• Hot sauce
• Sleeping in
• Inter-species friendships
• Uproarious laughter
• Snow falling at night (preferably viewed from inside)
• Pizza and beer
• Teachers, firefighters, and EMTs
• Getting lost in a book
• Seeing people hug each other after a long separation
• Red leaves against a blue sky
• Large family gatherings in public parks
• Whiskey

Okay…I must admit, I do feel better now. Positivity wins again, dammit. There go my hate list aspirations.

If you tell someone you wrote a book, the next words you’ll hear are: “What’s it about?” (This is good for you to know if you’re lying about having written a book, so you can craft a basic plot line to accompany the lie.)

When people ask what Aret is about, I say, “Dragons.” If they don’t run away, I continue with: “It’s the first book in a fantasy trilogy. It’s about a girl who finds out on her twenty-first birthday that she’s actually a dragon on another world.”

That is, in a way, what Aret is about. It’s at least the basic premise under which I began writing the story. But really, Aret is about relationships and social evolution, subjects that have felt particularly pertinent throughout this miserable election year.

In case you’re wondering, she voted for Smaug.

I wrote Aret during the 2012 election season, and while that one seemed ugly and contentious at the time, it was like a moonlit stroll on the beach compared to this year’s. As luck would have it, 2016 was the perfect year to release Aret, what with its themes of hope, strife, fear, and forgiveness. I think that’s why so many people who don’t read fantasy like the book. The ideas resonate with them, regardless of the subject matter.

Two of Aret’s central characters – the Red and Blue Matriarchs – reflect a few of the author’s flagrantly disparate personality traits. The Red Matriarch is calm and reasonable, while the Blue Matriarch is more like: “HOW DARE YOU DEFY ME? I WILL DESTROY YOU!”  So while the Red Matriarch understands that true, lasting social change comes about through diplomacy and relationship-building, the Blue Matriarch would make the counterargument: “If all of your enemies are dead, there’s no need to build relationships with them.”

“Ima pop you right in your stupid face!”

But we can’t make everyone who disagrees with us just disappear, despite what the Blue Matriarch would have you believe. Many monstrous dictators have attempted that tactic over the years with predictably horrific results. In the case of our country’s current circumstances, when the winners are declared and the dust settles, we’re all still going to be stuck here together, and it sure would be nice if we could coexist with more grace and dignity than we’ve demonstrated over the past year.

As we move forward into the tremulous atmosphere following this hideous election season, I vow to do my personal best to emulate the Red Matriarch, not the Blue. There’s a good reason why a critic of an early Aret draft wrote “Blue bitch!”  in the margin of a Blue Matriarch scene. While stewing in righteous fury and violent revenge fantasies can feel really satisfying in the moment, the fact is this: the Blue Matriarch is an asshole. Let’s not be like her. No one likes jerks, and acting like one weighs on our hearts.

Here’s to a happier, healthier, more hopeful, red-matriarchal future for us all. Cheers.