hometown glory
extremely homophobic how utterly exhausted I’ve been all pride. June is nearly over, but I haven’t posted about my queer characters or my own queerness or anything else. not that I have to, even if it does kinda feel that way sometimes, but I want to. but my god I’ve been exhausted.
I could talk about all that in this newsletter. but I’ve been thinking a lot about home. and I think that’s a good topic for pride month, so here we are.
admittedly, I think about home all the time. I’m slightly obsessed with the whole concept.
home is very fluid to me.
if I’m not in Ohio and I say I’m going home, I mean I’m going back to Ohio, to the place I actually live and work, with a partner who supports me and friends who encourage me and a small but growing community of fellow writers and queer folks (and in some cases, both).
if I am in Ohio and I say I’m going home, most of the time I mean I’m going back to Michigan, to the place I grew up, where I went to school and had my first job and learned how to write, where my grandparents’ old house is and my aunts and uncles and cousins on that side of the family still mostly live.
but if you catch me in Ohio around Christmas and I say I’m going home, I mean I’m going to Georgia, which is home even though I’ve never lived there, because my parents live there with their five dogs.
god help you if you meet me in person for the first time and ask, “where are you from?” because rather than picking an answer—Ohio, because I live there now, or Michigan, because I grew up there, and let’s just leave Georgia out of it, shall we?—I’ll say “well—” and ramble on about the above.
sometimes, I envy my characters. Edna has it easy: for her, home is other people, plain and simple. which maybe makes sense, since she’s 83 and has some perspective and is a much more well-adjusted person than I am. anywhere is home as long as her found family is there with her. in Remarkable Retirement, home means finding your people.
and I do really believe that, because in my experience, it’s hard for anywhere to be home until you’ve found your people. when I first moved to Ohio, I hated it—not because I’m from Michigan and a deep and nonsensical hatred for Ohio is supposed to be coded into my DNA (if it is, the programmer must’ve made an error, because I actually love it here), but because I felt out of place. it wasn’t until November that year, when I met a bunch of other writers during National Novel Writing Month, that I started to feel like this was home.
it’s hard for me to let go of home, having once found it, but sometimes the waters are muddied. with my parents, sisters, and many other familiar faces long-gone from my hometown, with my grandparents gone, sometimes it’s hard to go back. I always look forward to it, but I’m also guaranteed to cry at some point during the trip because things have changed, people have moved on, and I’m not sure I belong there anymore even though I still love it fiercely.
to further complicate matters, it’s a small town in a rural area. and I’m queer and neurodivergent. and sure yeah fine, plenty of people I went to high school with are queer and ND now, but they also left, which does not inspire trust in the attitudes they might’ve left behind.
that fact didn’t stop me from reaching out to the library I grew up going to, to ask about doing an author visit.
they say you can’t go home again, but maybe sometimes you can
I reached out to my hometown library because it’s my hometown library, but also because Edna & Co. visit my hometown in the book. the town does not fare well. some shit burns down. I did not say this to the library when I asked about visiting.
possibly because of my lie by omission, the library was like “hell yeah, come visit,” but I was apprehensive all the way up until the event. I relaxed a little when my contact suggested talking about how my identity informs my writing and vice-versa, as there’d be interest in the topic. but I still wondered what kinds of comments I might have to deal with, especially without family and friends there to pad the audience.
and then the day came. and the very first thing that happened was that a young library worker ran out of the office like “OH MY GOD IT’S YOU.”
this person is too young to have known me when I lived here. turns out they’d found my short stories while looking for queer and ND authors, read all of them, and yeeted them at all their friends.
(remember when that one “most anticipated” list referred to me as “beloved short story author E.M. Anderson” and I was like THIS IS MY WHOLE PERSONALITY NOW EVEN THOUGH IT MUST’VE BEEN WRITTEN BY SOMEONE I KNOW BECAUSE MY SHORT STORIES HAVE VERY LITTLE REACH. turns out I actually kind of am a beloved short story author)
after the event, several attendees thanked me for talking so openly about being ND in particular—they either were or knew someone who was ND. the library worker who was so excited to have me in for a visit said my stories were so important to young queer and ND people—which, as an adult author, I don’t usually hear. one person discovered my books because of the event, two had brought copies to be signed, and two more bought copies while I was there. a librarian I grew up with recognized me, hugged me, and asked about my family. my aunt raced over after work so I could sign her copy. everyone thanked me for coming and said they hoped I’d come back.
on the two-hour drive home (Ohio home), I cried. again. as usual.
but this time I cried happy tears. because this trip home (Michigan home) left me feeling loved and welcomed and home in my hometown in a way I haven’t since my grandparents died and my parents moved away.
our stories mean home
can you believe they still haven’t dropped an our flag means death trailer?
I think all my stories are about home, in the end.
what it means. what it is. how we find it or make it or reclaim it.
in Remarkable Retirement, Edna makes home, adopting everyone who comes her way and loving them fiercely and sometimes despite themselves. in Buried Things, virtually every character is stumbling around trying to figure out what home looks like when you’ve left, when you’ve lost, when you can’t go back. in my short stories, home might be a cottage in the wood with found family who give you the space to make mistakes, or the flower shop where you live with your plant-witch wife in defiance of the disapproving villagers, or the beach where you await the sea-goddess you love whose return you’re still awaiting.
home is individual and communal and a place and people and relation and identity. and it can be hard to find because there’s so much wrapped up in it and so many expectations for what it is and what it looks like. which isn’t always what it actually is, as those of you celebrating pride month are probably well aware.
sometimes I still struggle with home. maybe that’s why I write about it so much. but I’m lucky to have good family, good friends, and a good partner, and to be able to connect with people more and more through my writing. if nothing else, I hope my books are home for people. because if I became a writer for any reason, it’s to find home myself and to help others find it, too.
read my books
or, you know, my one full-length book so far and my short stories.
The Remarkable Retirement of Edna Fisher
an 83-year-old leaves the nursing home for fantastical adventure when she learns she’s the Chosen One, but destiny may not be as black and white as the stories make it seem. buy on bookshop, amazon, barnes & noble, or from your favorite retailer.“Sea-Change” in Wyldblood Press’s From the Depths: A Fantasy Anthology
an ex-sea captain marooned on an island tells a young sailor the tale of the sea-goddess she never got over. buy on bookshop, amazon, barnes & noble, or via wyldblood press.“Something Witchy This Way Comes” in SJ Whitby’s Awakenings: A Cute Mutants Anthology*
a young girl from an abusive household finds unexpectedly family in the old witch in the woods. buy on bookshop, amazon, barnes & noble, or from your favorite retailer.*proceeds benefit Rainbow Railroad
“The Raising of Hester Macrae” in Dark Horses: The Magazine of Weird Fiction, no. 4
when a young boy is raised from the dead, the villagers blame the healer's wife, a known witch. only the healer knows the truth: it's not her wife but she herself who's the necromancer. buy on bookshop, amazon, or barnes & noble.