Friday Five -- Suzanne Lazear

This week's author is another 2k12 Classmate, and I'm thrilled to get the chance to talk a little about her novel, INNOCENT DARKNESS, which was published by Flux on August 8.  Suzanne is an avid Steampunker, runs with bustles, invents cupcake cannons and lights up Twitter when she gets going on a topic.


THE FIVE:

1.  What would your super power be?

I’d want to be telekinetic. Or Fly. Yeah, flying would be awesome.

2.  What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?

I had a teacher tell me I’d never be an author.

3.  What is your guiltiest pleasure? 

Chocolate! I especially love the dark chocolate pistachio toffee from Trader Joes.

4.  What is the worst job you’ve done?

In Grad School I spend an entire summer stuffing envelopes while standing up for a reputable organization.  I was promised a stipend for the summer and never paid.  I actually did additional work for them in the fall because they told me if I did they could make sure I was paid.  I still was never paid. When I finally worked up the nerve to approach someone they called me a liar and sent their lawyer after me. It was awful.

5.  What keeps you awake at night?

Odd things – like did Werewolves live in the Wild West? What if only half the world died – would it still be an apocalypse?  Half the time these odd thoughts become stories.

ABOUT INNOCENT DARKNESS:

Wish. Love. Desire. Live.

Sixteen-year-old Noli Braddock's hoyden ways land her in an abusive reform school far from her home. The school slowly tries to strip Noli of everything that makes her who she is. On mid-summer's eve she wishes to be anyplace but that dreadful school. The mysterious Kevighn Silver from the Realm of Faerie rescues her and brings her to the Otherworld, only to reveal that she must be sacrificed, otherwise, the entire Otherworld civilization will perish.

ABOUT SUZANNE:

You can find Suzanne on her website.
On Twitter.
And on Facebook.

What Century Am I In?

Any of you who follow my blog or my tweets regularly know that I don't normally go on a political rant - no matter what issues are making headlines.  But there are just a few things that I can't let go.

I write about women in history.  About women who lived five hundred years ago.  A time when they were treated little better than possessions - and sometimes worse.  When women didn't have the right to choose anything - not a life-partner, not a career, not a leader and certainly not her reproductive options.    A time when any and all reproductive issues were blamed on the woman - the ability to get pregnant, the health and physical strength of the baby, even the sex of the child.  A time long before science caught up with reality.

Reading the news today, I felt transported back to another century.  Because science hasn't caught up with a man who claims that a woman's body can "shut down" and "not get pregnant" if she is attacked. And humanity hasn't caught up with the emotional, reproductive and legal rights of a victim of rape.

Today, in the United States of the 21st Century, women have rights.  We have rights to choose our careers - we can be teachers, doctors, governors, Navy SEALs.  We can choose our life-partners, and we can choose which gender we prefer to become our life partners.  In many states, we have control over our reproductive options.  And we have the right to choose our leaders, and the right to demand that they respect our choices.

We have an election coming up, my friends.  I loathe the runup to November in election years.  I'm pretty good at hiding my head in the sand.  I can't access television programming in my house.  But I vote.  In every election.

One hundred years ago, three states granted women suffrage.  The rest of the world caught up eventually.  Choices are what make us human.  Our "ladder to the stars" as Mumford & Sons say.  Don't you think we ought to exercise that?  We have a voice, unlike the women in Tudor times.  That's something to celebrate.

For more information on what inspired this post, take a look at today's BBC News article on Todd Akins.

And check out Kami Kinard's blog for a fabulous post on women in politics and women voting.