In the third episode of Writing While Disabled, Kristy Anne Cox and Kate Johnston sit down with author Donyae Coles for a frank and candid discussion around adjusting one's life and writing processes around one's disability, finding support to help with the tasks that become difficult, and how genre can lend itself to telling disabled stories authentically.

If you prefer, you can watch the full interview with close-caption subtitles here.

Vote for Strange Horizons in the Hugo Awards

• We have two poems, a novelette, and the magazine all on the ballot! Get your WSFS and/or virtual Seattle Worldcon membership on their website, and you can cast your vote now.

---

Welcome everyone, to Writing While Disabled. Very excited to be here today with the fabulous Donyae Coles, and also with our co-host Kate. We're gonna go ahead and introduce ourselves. My name is Kristy Anne Cox. I have been working on the Writing While Disabled series for a while, and I also have some short fiction out.

Turn over to Kate for your intro.

 Hi, I'm Kate Johnston. I am a writer and editor and now an anthologist living in currently Oakland, California. I also have ADHD and some other stuff. So it's one of the reasons I am here doing this.

 Hi, I'm Donyae Coles. I am an author and artist. I live in Minnesota. Midnight Rooms is my debut novel and I've also written a number of short stories. I have ADHD, and I'm here to talk to you all today.

 Yay. I also have ADHD, so this is like the ADHD fan club today. Okay, good.

 ADHD high five!

 ADHD high five! Disorganized, walking away, forgetting what we're doing.

Should we start with the book? Midnight Rooms. I do not have the physical copy of the book to hold up, but I'm gonna describe this cover for you.

So we have this beautiful young girl holding a fawn with a cup of tea, a really intricately colored teacup with butterflies, and it's haunting, it's beautiful, but also creepy. This is on a black cover. This is a novel, and this is Donyae's debut novel, which you can find at your local favorite bookstore. I really like this cover.

Donyae, can you tell us about this book?

Yeah. So it's a gothic horror novel. It's a true gothic horror, and what I mean by that is it is everything you loved about the gothic, here it is, in the modern world— only it's not the modern world, it's Victorian England. But it is about a young woman named Orabella, who has been raised by her aunt and uncle because her own parents have passed away some years back. And she's getting older and they're like, "you can't just live here forever." And a man, Elias, comes and says, "I have proposition for you. Come be my wife. I will take care of you. I need a wife." But he does not actually explain why he needs a wife. That's not made clear to her, or anyone about why this man would need a wife. And she is whisked away with the idea that she's going to be taken care of and she's going to live this lovely dream life. And there's dreaming, but it's not exactly the fairytale that she had in mind.

 Yeah. So nightmare elements.

 Yeah. And it's been described as a fever dream quite a bit.

 Yeah, I saw that review. All the reviews I read were very, very warm and complimentary, and they sounded terrified.

 Good. That's the point.

 Yeah.

 That sounds amazing. I have not had a chance to read it yet, but I've got it on my Kindle and I'm very excited.

Usually we start by doing our methodology questions, so shall we jump right in?

 Go for it.

All right. What does your writing space look like? Where do you write?

Here, this is where I write. I didn't write Midnight Rooms in this space because I had just had a major upheaval in my life. So I used to have an office. So a year ago if this interview was happening, same computer, but behind me, instead of my bed, you would've seen easels and bookcases and art supplies because it's all in one room. But now it's my bedroom.

 Just for our viewers or readers who aren't seeing this, could you describe, are you sitting at a desk? It looks like you're in a bedroom.

 I am in a bedroom. Behind me is a bed. I am sitting at a desk. You cannot see this, but I'm sitting at a desk with a desktop computer, standard keyboard. It actually glows, it's very nice. Not my nicest, it's just normal keys, but I've been thinking about switching that out for typewriter keys again.

 Oh, yeah.

 By the by, the typewriter keys make you more cognizant of what you're doing. I guess we can talk more about that in the accommodations you make for yourself.

 Yeah. Yeah.

 That's why I've been thinking about switching them out. Actually now I've said that I should just go ahead and buy 'em off Amazon. I should just go ahead and do that.

Anyway. This is a desk, it's a very normal desk. This is actually not my usual desk, this is a secondary desk I had because my usual desk was too big and it would not fit in this room. So on this desk is the PC, like the actual tower, a screen, a couple crystals and stuff that I like to have around, and just a lot of clutter to be honest. And a lamp. It's a pink lamp.

 Yeah. You said crystals?

 Yeah.

Can we see one? [Donyae shows one on camera.] Ooh!

 Is this how they do it on the TikTok, with the hand behind?

 Yeah. Are you superstitious about them at all? 'Cause I have crystals back here for luck, and I'm very superstitious about it.

 I don't like to use the term superstitious, but yeah, I do think that they be doing stuff.

 Yeah.

 That was a question that I had. How does your workspace reflect the mind space that helps you write?

It's just my space. I think that is the important thing is just, my space. This is space that I occupy, space that I own. And I think that's a really important difference for me because now, this is all I do right now. But prior to this, I worked in an office, I worked for the state of Pennsylvania, so I was at a computer all of the time. And sure, I put little trinkets in my cubicle and I personalized it a little bit, as we all do so that we don't lose ourselves— lose our mind in the great cubicles.

But that wasn't my space, whereas this is my space. This is my chair. And I went through— especially after I moved, because I couldn't bring the chair that I wrote Midnight Rooms in, so I had to get a new chair and it was a process of going through four or five different chairs and cushions to find one that I could sit in that worked well. And I don't know if it was just— this is probably a couple of things, but I am a fat black woman, so like, I need the space in my chair. Important.

So that for me is just, this is just my space. These are my crystals that are at my workspace. This is my little dream doll at my workspace. This is my keyboard. This is my little drawer seats that I'm keeping for reasons I don't understand right now, but will become clear to you at some point in time.

I have books here like, to my left are three bookshelves, three mid-size bookshelves. One brown, two pink, full of books. They are full, like shelves overflowing, full of books. So it's just that reclamation of space, and that allows me to be just free with my thoughts, because I'm in my space and I don't believe in thought crimes. So you know, it allows me to have these thoughts that some people would be like, "oh, that's terrible". And I don't mean I'm having intrusive thoughts, I mean like, "I'm gonna kill this guy, and this is the horrible way I'm going to do it".

 Fictionally.

 Yes.

 Fictionally, yes.

 If he keeps talking to me about—

 But also there's some neighbors around here that we could fictionally... fictionally.

Actually, I really like my neighbors. My neighbors on the one side are also writers. I live next to Sam Richard from Weirdpunk Books and Joe Coach, are my neighbors. That's awesome. They're awesome, but they're also having dark thoughts.

 Well, that's our job. I'm hearing you say that the objects around you have personal meaning and that is empowering. And you have a door you can shut.

That is super important. But my door being shut is really just about— and it's funny 'cause I like, wrote about this a little bit for something else. There's an anthology on motherhood and horror movies that is coming out that I'm part of. But I talked about it, because the door being able to close and being able to be like "this is now..." [gestures with hands like delineating space, pushing outward] is not really about my disability or my comfort level. It's just to be like, "children, I'm done with you now."

 Yeah. I wondered about that. Cause how well do you deal with background noise?

So that is touch and go. I am usually pretty okay, but if I've been going too much during the day, like a day like today where I've been outside and I've been doing a ton of things, especially—I've been doing a ton of things for the last couple days because both of my sons had birthdays within a week of each other, so I've been outside, I've been running around. So during this kind of time period, my sensitivity to sound is going to go way up, and I will start snapping at people. And then my daughter comes in and she is like, "all right, it's time to turn off the big light. You don't need that anymore." My daughter's 19. So, yeah, I do have a little bit of sound sensitivity.

It's funny because I didn't realize that's what was going on. But I, one day I sat down and I was listening to music—I generally listen to music while I write—and I was ready to fight someone when the song was playing and I was like, this is one of my favorite songs. And it was, it's The Running Free by Coheed and Cambria. And I was like, ooh. And I turned the song off and I got better. And I was like, that's so weird. Because that is one of my favorite, I can listen to that song on repeat, but if you catch me on one of these days, one of these timeframes where I'm overstimulated, I have no more patience, I can't handle whatever it is... absolutely not. I gotta turn it off.

 You turn off the light sometimes though? Do you write in the dark?

Yes, I do turn off the light. I don't write 'in the dark', 'cause I just don't, I think I have a little weirdness. I'm always worried about insects, but I live in the frozen north now, so I'm hoping that fear goes away. But what I use to accommodate that—so I have a bedside lamp, which is behind me up against the back wall, and that has three settings on the bulb. So I will turn that one on and then turn the overhead light off if I'm having a really bad day. I have a little, they're called sunset lamps.

 Yeah.

 Yeah.

And I have one of those on my desk, like a USB powered one that's plugged into a USB port. It provides like a little bit of light, just so I can get around and navigate the space around me. And then if I really need to do something where I'm like, "I need a brighter light", like I knit— if you see me on the internet, you see me knitting. So what I'll do is I have my pink desk light has a very bright bulb in it, but it's adjustable. So I'll put that, and I'll adjust it downward so it's just focused on what I'm doing.

I will also use that light if I'm drawing at my desk and I don't want the overhead light, but the light in the background's a little too far away for me to like really be able to see what I'm doing because my eyesight is poor—it's not like blind-poor, but it is not great—then I will use that light. So I have the use of lamps.

But yeah, I will turn off this big light. This big light is actually only on right now because I was doing this, the video.

 Do you ever seek out non-home workspaces, like coffee shops?

No, but that has to do in part because I write on a desktop, as opposed to a laptop. I have a laptop right now. It's really funny, I'm going with a friend outside to write next week, I think. We were just talking about it, and I do have a laptop, but my son is using it for school right now, so it's segued into being his laptop.

So when I go out, I'm going to try and use my iPad and the pen feature to write on, but I don't really write outside the home, and it is one where in the situation I was in previous, I did not leave the house, period, ever. And like, that's a whole thing. And now, even though I go outside more, I can't drag my computer with me.

 I was gonna say, it sounds like the way you're controlling your soundscape and your lightscape is accommodative for you with the ADHD, like when you're getting overstimulated or when you're having different situations within ADHD from day to day, that you're using your sound and your light to help. Is that accurate?

Yeah, and I think the thing about the ADHD for me is, and I don't know how true it is for everyone, but I find that mine is really hormonal controlled. I am not in control of the kind of day I'm going to have when it comes to that, my ovaries are.

I could have a day where I'm outside like all day, and then I come home and I am still good to go. Everything's fine. I am on point. And then I could have a day where I have to take the trash out one time and I'm losing track of everything. It's just really all dependent. So it is constantly fluctuating inside of those kind of parameters.

 We were gonna ask about accommodation, so that kind of segues into that. Like, what other accommodations do you use as part of your process?

I was talking about those key caps and I am gonna change them back, 'cause I don't hate these, I like them a lot. But like, the keyboard I have is a clicky keyboard. I've got the loud keys, so when you're typing, you really hear that sound. I think these ones are blue caps, in case anybody's wondering. So that is a way to keep me like, "keyed in". My keyboard also glows, which is not something I've always had, but having the glow also helps because it makes it this novel thing.

So here's the thing. I go through a lot of keyboards, because I type so much. So the keyboards wear out. This one that I have now, I have it set so it changes color, like a flow state of changing color. But the ones that I really like can be set so that my actual typing changes the colors of the keys.

 Oh, like when you hit it, it changes color, that particular brand does that?

 It makes a light effect that happens, and I'm not always paying attention to it, but it is a thing that keeps me drawn into the process. So it's like the light and the sound become their own sort of stims that help me stay in the process of what I'm doing.

So this is like one of those keyboards that you can swap out the keys and the caps as they wear out. Because again, I was running through keyboards like crazy, so it was like a lot of money every time I had to repair it. The ones that I was using before had typewriter keys, which are the round keys, and I like this. This one has normal keys in the sense that they're the square keys, but they have cats on them, so they're very cute. And that's another little trick, have tools that you're really excited to use.

I learned that actually from art. Like my visual art, because if you are excited about using the paint or the paper or the pencils or whatever, then you are more likely to use them as opposed to stuff that you're using just because it's there. But I also found that having the round key caps, my typing got really precise, because the space between the keys is different, but in a good way.

 I was gonna ask, did you take typing in school?

 I did take typing in school, but I failed it. I failed it every single time. I did terrible. I think about that all the time.

 'Cause that's something that happens to those of us who either didn't take it or didn't cotton onto it very well. We tend to type really hard.

Yeah, I do type hard. Okay. So a side note about the typing, because I think this story is hilarious and I wanna tell it because it's so freaking funny. One—this is not the story I wanna tell, but since you brought it up, I did take typing 'cause I am of the nineties. And I felt it terribly. I could not learn to type for anything, and I did not learn to type until AOL chat rooms. That is what taught me to type. Like that tactical, "I need to communicate"—

Yep.

—Like process, is how I learned how to type. And then I had to get really good at typing to get a job, 'cause again, I worked for the state.

But when I moved to Minnesota, I went to interview for this one job, which was for the sheriff's department up here, in fingerprinting, 'cause I'm not gonna work for the sheriff's department, but I was like, "but fingerprinting is okay".

So I went to go take this, and the lady was like, "oh, there's a typing test." And it was like the most ridiculous, weird thing, 'cause the typing test was just a free website. So I'm like, whatever, okay, I'll take your typing test. And she's like, "don't worry about it. It's not that serious, you know, just however you can do it, doesn't matter." And I was like, okay. And she's like, "I'll be right back".

So she walked away and I did my typing test and I was like, "there's a problem with the website. I had to start over." And she was like, "oh, it's fine, don't worry. I usually let people go two or three times. So if you need to go do it again, that's no problem." And I was like, "that's very sweet of you, but I don't need to do this again."

"Oh, what, how did you do?" She pulled my score. She was like "oh my God! You... you definitely passed." And they took me to my interview and they looked at the score and they're like, "oh, you're a typing pro!" And I was like, "yeah, that's how you get a book out!"

 Right? You're hired, this isn't even a typing related job.

 I had a really stupid typing test for the state of California, and it was another one of those free sites, and it was one of the things where you couldn't backspace.

 Yes. I was like, what?

 Yeah, you just had to keep going, which drove me insane. And she was like "yeah, you can do it multiple times." I'm like, "oh no, because by the fourth time, I'm gonna be able to do this by heart." And yeah, I got further than anyone had ever gotten with zero mistakes and, yeah. The whole thing.

 I was like, because the state of Pennsylvania also has a typing test, right? So I had already done type, but that was like a serious closed thing. Then you got a paper to type all the, you gotta, yeah.

 The keyboard, the program, all of this affects your writing, because it either slows you down or it speeds you up. Maybe it forces you to work harder to enter each word. Like, when I have to put in more calories to type in a word, because I'm, I don't know, the keys are farther apart or whatever, I find myself writing fewer words.

Is that the same with you guys?

So let's talk about software. I did not have this when I was working on the earlier drafts of Midnight Rooms, so this is something I discovered later. I use a program called StimuWrite. It's available on itch.io, I think it's free, and then the theme packs cost money, I don't remember. It's made by another writer, her name is Eve Harms. I'm just name dropping all the homies today. It's a software that she made that is just a no frills writing program with fun backgrounds and emojis.

So like, as you reach a writing goal—let's say I have mine set for low numbers, right? I like quick things. So like, as you write 200 words, it'll have an emoji explosion on the screen and then every time you type, a bunch of emojis come up. There's sounds that you can put in, like they have their own built in typing sounds and stuff. I obviously don't need that 'cause I already have a keyboard that does it. There's no spell check, there's no grammar check, there's nothing being changed. So you know when you're in Word and you type and it'll be like "you actually meant to type this." And I was like, I said what I said! There's none of that. It is just the words you wrote.

Now, that copy that I write in that... full of errors. Full, just absolutely steadily full of errors. But I can just put that in a document and then I have the basis for my first draft and it'll keep me going, especially when I'm still trying to figure out the story. And I find that using that program, it will make me write because of all of the interaction that this program is having with all of my different senses, right? Like my sound and visual. But what I also found was, and I don't know if it's just because it's taken out of Word or what, but when I'm in that program I am not so fixated on getting the perfect sentence. And it allows me just to get the idea around whatever I'm writing, around that scene, and find my way into the story. So I use that program for a lot of the initial writing, and then I copy and paste it into Word because I have to, because that is the industry standard. I have to use Word.

What also I found, and I don't know if this is available on the web based program—'cause I know some people just use the free web version of Word, I don't know if it's in there. Google also has this, but it's not as good. There's a diction option, that you can just talk to the thing. And again, there's gonna be mistakes in that, that you're gonna have to go back and you're gonna have to edit, but you should be editing anyway. You should be editing. But on days where the typing is not really working out, I might be like, now it's time to talk to my computer.

And I will use that to just get those basic ideas down and those overall concepts down. You know with the ADHD, part of the thing is your thoughts run really fast. So with the diction, that is instantaneous. As soon as the thought comes in, it is out my mouth and we are off to the races, as opposed to the process of actually typing it. So if my thoughts are running really fast, especially around something that I'm trying to work on an idea or process for, that has been a real lifesaver.

Thank you Microsoft Word for that feature, I really appreciate it. If you could gimme more of that and less of that Co-pilot stuff, that would be great.

 So voice dictation works for you?

 Yes.

 What's your process overall? You talked a little bit about your first draft.

So the first step is the idea, right? Whatever the idea is going to be. And I actually keep those ideas and I use Google Keep, like the Keep notes app on your phone. It's web based. I learned that trick from somebody at FIYAH Con. I have a folder full of various ideas, various notes. Anytime I get an idea that I'm like, I wanna put this with this idea, I add it to that note.

So everything starts in one folder that says Story Ideas, and they're color coded. And then when that idea becomes larger where I'm like, "okay, I'm really getting to choofs this thing", then that idea gets its own folder with whatever its call sign's gonna be. The Sunken, The Adored is the name of my next book, so that has a folder called TSTA. And that is where we start putting in all of the concepts, all of the ideas, all of the notes, pictures. I don't do Pinterest boards, I don't do mood boards. I do this folder and I upload all the stuff that I see that I'm like, "this is a thing that pertains to this. This is an idea I have. This is a comp title."

And I make notes about that. These are my characters. That's one note. These are the themes that this book is playing in. That's one note. This is this work that work is in conversation with. That's a note. And I keep all these notes. There is no organization in that because it's organized by date. And that is amazingly freeing because then this process of note keeping does not become its own mini process. I don't get wrapped up in any sort of "this needs to be organized alphabetically, this needs to"— no, it's in the pile. And when I need to find something, I have to search it in the search bar. Okay. Done.

So then we start drafting. Usually nowadays (my draft) starts in the StimuWrite app where I start writing out these ideas, and then I copy and paste each day's writing session into the Word document that is the rough draft of the book. So the first drafting is the rough draft, and that is a mess. It is awful. But I usually take at most about 30,000 words to really get the feeling of the book, and how this is gonna work and what I really wanna say here. Sometimes that first 30,000 words gets deleted. But I'm getting better in my craft. I'm getting more comfortable with my own style and deeper understanding of how I work, so we have not been seeing the first 30 k deletion in a while, so yay.

So I get to the end of the first draft, or the rough draft, and then that's done. Then I have to go back and make that rough draft readable. Now at some point in the rough draft, sometime within the 20-30 K range, I will have switched from using StimuWrite to just writing directly on the document because I have found the thread of the story, and that allows me to really start crafting the sentences closer to the form that they will appear in the final draft. And so I'm writing directly by the end of the rough draft in the Word document, that will eventually be the document that goes on to my agent and my editor. And so I finish the rough draft, I usually let it sit for a week, work on some short stories, work on nothing. Then I go back and I start editing.

Now, at that point I know a hundred percent how the story ends up. So I have to make sure that everything that is at the back end is supported by the front end, which is a process in and of itself. This is a difficult process with the ADHD because the memory is bad, which is why I usually have in the note app a note that is started at some point during the rough draft, that is "things to add when we do our first edit". And it's just a bullet list of different stuff that I need to go back and make sure exists.

Sometimes this stuff is pretty easy and I can just do a find-and-replace around a keyword or a group of keywords to get me to the right part of the document. And then I could just be like, "ah, here you go. I knew I talked about this thing here." Sometimes it's a little bit difficult and I have to just kinda remember what I'm doing. But I also during this process understand it doesn't have to be perfect.

This is not actionable advice for anyone who is not already at this traditional publishing stage of their career. But if you are there and you are in your first round, the work doesn't need to necessarily be absolutely stunningly perfect when it goes to your editor, because you're going to get it back like twice, and then you're going to get it back two more times after that, and then again three more times. You're going to get that work back and every time you get the book back, it just gets cleaner and cleaner.

And even with Midnight Rooms, there was stuff. By the last pass page, there was nothing to correct, but even with the first level of pass pages, I found stuff that I was like, "oh God. Yeah. How did this get so far?" that I had to be like, "oh, we just need to rewrite this line." And they weren't big things. It was just like, I need to rewrite this sentence, it got moved to the wrong place or whatever. And I say that because, especially with the ADHD, especially with that neurodivergence, just knowing that "oh, this is coming back to me," 'cause it's hard to have that conversation with yourself and convince yourself that it doesn't need to be perfect, so that you can get to the next stage, but it truly does not need to be a hundred percent perfect. It will be a hundred percent perfect when it goes to print, but you have seven more read throughs before it gets there.

 I was gonna ask you if you used an outline and your description is so pants, that it's a skirt.

There is an outline actually! (laughs)

So no, I do a lot of pantsing, because I gotta let the story tell me, I gotta let the story guide me. But there is an outline at about—okay, when I sold The Sunken, The Adored, the outline came before the book because I sold that on proposal. So they had to have an outline, they had to know where this thing was going, what was gonna happen. So I had to make the outline before the book was done. But the other book I sold in that same deal, which was What Kills You, that book I just wrote and the only time when I started to outline it, I was like maybe 50, 60,000 words into it. Like I was far into that story.

And the reason any sort of outline around that book exists, and the same thing with Midnight Rooms, was because I was at a point where I was like, I have to connect two parts, and I need to know what happens in those two parts without having to write those two parts because I had to figure that out. So my outlining process, if I'm not selling it on proposal, like if I'm just writing, the outline itself will not start really appearing until I am pretty far into a book, like halfway through. And it is just so I can be like, these are the things that happen. These are the things I want to make sure happen. This is me trying not to be incredibly long-winded about what's gonna happen, but I'm still writing a hundred K words.

But that's where I outline. I think there is this kind of draw to be like, "oh, I'm both of these things. I'm the combination of the pantser and the plotter", but I'm not. I'm still really pantsing because even with an outline, I will write that out and just be like, "nah, I got a better idea."

 Yep. Yeah. Oh, that's the thing. An outline is still just a guide. It's never the thing that you have to absolutely hue to, because if you wanted to do that, you'd be writing academic stuff.

 Yeah.

 And don't get me wrong, in fiction, I love me a good footnote, but it's not required.

Yeah. And an outline can also be a diagnostic tool instead of a planning tool. Or you can be like, there's something wrong, what exactly is it? Or it can just be a way for me, for memory, I'm trying to remember the sequence of events correctly, particularly if I'm layering in clues or I'm looking at a relationship arc and I wanna make sure that I had enough buildup for each of the satisfying steps along the way. An outline really helps me see if I'm missing any big scenes or pieces.

 Sometimes that outline is just a map that you draw after you get most of the way there.

Yeah. And the thing to remember there is that the map is not the territory.

I don't know if I'm following you. The map is not the territory... Okay. You're saying it's literally not a piece of ground. Now I'm with you. Now I'm with you.

 It's that old thing of, the map may show that this is 200 feet away. It doesn't show you that it's straight up a cliff.

 Yes.

 Gotcha.

Yeah. But one of the things we do talk about and mostly because, oh my God, I need this—is permission. And I think that what a lot of younger writers—not chronologically, but young in their craft—what they really need to hear is, "yes, you can do this funky, weird thing that you have to do in order to put out 10,000 words. That's fine. Go do that. If it means that you have to do this after eating 12 chocolate chip cookies and standing on your head for five minutes, fine, do that then."

 That's what I mean about superstitious for me. There's this book called, not the War of Art. Wait, there's The Art of War, which is the original, it's the War of Art, and I don't actually like the book, but there's this one part where the guy is, he's collected all these different tchotchkes from his trips in places, and he has lined them up because they remind him of interesting places he's been. And I was thinking about what we draw energy from, and your process can be as arcane and weird and mystical, or as boring and routine as you want. It can change every time, every story might require a different process.

 So what I have to say about that is I think that is a really big, important piece, especially when you're working with neurodivergence, and this is something that I really learned with visual art, especially after I was medicated and I was like, wait a second. A lot of the advice you hear is "you have to show up. This is how you do it. You have to show up every day. You have to sit down every day and the work will come for you." And I'm like, "that's never gonna work, 'cause lots of things can come. Do you know what it's like up here? I can sit in front of a blank screen for hours, okay? I don't know what y'all be looking at."

And I didn't realize (it) until I was medicated, because I got to this understanding about the process and about repetition and showing up and what that actually means, 'cause of visual art. I was like, "oh, this needs to be realigned", because what happens is the same advice is given for visual artists. "If you wanna be an artist, you gotta show up every day. You gotta do art every day, whether you feel like it or not. You gotta sit down and paint, baby."

And I tried that advice, but what I found that was happening was I would have days where I could do a beautiful piece of artwork, beautiful, post it online, everyone's like, "oh my god, girl", right? And then the next day, apropos of nothing, couldn't draw a circle. And I didn't understand why that was happening to me. I have ruined so many pieces that I was working on because I tried to follow that advice to show up every day and to do art whether I felt like it or not. Just do it every day. But when I got medicated, I recognized very quickly, like day one, that suddenly I could do art whether I wanted to or not. I could draw whether I wanted to or not. I had all of the skills that I had struggled with—that I could only access sometimes—all of the time, as long as I was medicated.

I realized that the advice that I was being given, that this is stuff you have to show up every day, that is not for the neurodiverse ring. That is a neurotypical brain that can do that. Mine don't work like that. Mine is paywalled behind my attention. I can't access it. I can't just be like, "I'm gonna sit down and paint and it's gonna be beautiful as it was yesterday." No, it will not. It will be garbage, because I can't access those skills.

And the same thing happens with writing. I cannot access those skills every single day. There are days where I am completely on top of my game and I can hyperfocus and I can get 50,000 words done in a day. Not 50,000 words, maybe 5,000 words done in a day. And there are days where I can get five words done. Because I don't have that, I don't have that focus. I can't tap into the story. I can't do the things that I need to do. And that's okay. That is fine. There's nothing wrong with that being the reality. I just need to know that that's the reality.

And I think more people who are dealing with neurodivergence have to understand that that is the reality. And the secondary reality is, a lot of times we're using our writing as our hyper-focus emotional thing that we do. That's our daydream. So when we get medicated, we cannot do it. We have a different relationship for writing, which is why I write at night. Which I guess is the secondary accommodation: my meds wear off at night.

 When it's quiet, the kids are in bed, ain't nobody coming to bug you. The night is your time.

Exactly. Yeah. I have a couple, I have a writing group that I write with. I used to write during the day too, I used to run sprints with a friend of mine, but I'm not able to do that now because my son is homeschooled. But I write at night with a group, we run tomato timers, the Pomodoro method. And I only do this with this group, I don't do this in my normal, I'm not doing all that. But we run these Pomodoro timers at night, and I will write from six to like midnight with them. And if I don't have to do anything in the morning, I will write until three, four o'clock in the morning nonstop. No problem. I get a second wind at 1:30, which I think is also part of the neurodivergent brain, 'cause a lot of us are night owls. A lot of us really start coming online, and we've got that delayed sleep phase stuff. So I think that's a little bit of the neurodivergence too.

But yeah, that's one of my accommodations.

I wanna ask you a medication question, if that's okay. So like, when you talk about this set of complications and problems that come with not being properly medicated. So sometimes writer's block is: you need proper medical care and access to the right medications and it takes time to get there, right? But sometimes it's about adjusting to a new medication and figuring out what your cycle is, how your brain works with the extended release version versus with all the other different versions you're trying.

So let's say you've got a medication that's working for you, for health and everything, and now you're trying to rewrite your writing routine into that. I think it's really helpful to pay attention to exactly what you're talking about. Is this the time of day on this new medication that I should be drafting? Or do I need to wait until it's starting to wear off? Is the medication gonna help me get the rest of my life done, so I've got everything off of the plate before I write? Particularly with hyper-focus medications, 'cause I take one for ADHD where it's like, I have three good hours, but I'm gonna be writing a particular type of prose during those three good hours. If I wanna write brooding melancholy poetry, that's a different time of day. It needs to have worn off a little bit more, if that makes sense.

No, it makes perfect sense. So like, about a year ago actually, I had the worst March. I got really sick, and during this time period my doctor changed my meds, 'cause she wanted to try me on something else. I take the extended release version of Guanfacine, which I know does not work for everyone.

 Yeah.

So she switched me to standard release version but more often, because on the Guanfacine I was on, I was only getting I think six hours of focus time, which is what I call normal brain time. I would take it and it was wearing off as I was moving around or whatever. So she switched me to the standard release, take twice a day. I had an allergic reaction to that.

 Oh.

It's really weird because I'm fine on the extended release, but I can't take the standard release. I had to go to the ER. It was wild. So it was like a weekend, they had to take me off of the medication because I had this allergic reaction, and then we had to wait for my doctor to get back into the office so that she could look at what was going on and then reorder my medication. But now we've ordered all these different pills, so the insurance is giving us a hard time, so we gotta fight with them, et cetera, et cetera.

So during this time, I go off my meds, as one does. And that had been the first time in a really long time that I had—or not a long time, but like in over a year that I had been without. I had been consistently taking meds, I take my meds every day. You shouldn't just go off of the meds that are helping your brain. So then I had a little bit of withdrawal, and that was not fun. And then I started to get over that and I started to feel better, but I was like, "I'm back to not being able to function. Like, this is not good. Like, how did I make it this long, people? How are my children still alive? What is going on? I'm struggling." I have due dates at this point, like I have deadlines and I am on the phone with my agent like, "look, you gotta talk to these people, because I'm having a medical emergency." And he's great. He took care of everything. He's wonderful. He completely understood. And it's not my fault.

But it is important that I had a deadline during this, because what happened was I got back on the correct medication, but at that point it already walked outta my system. Yeah. So then it took time, it took like a solid two weeks for my meds to come back, and I was struggling with this assignment I was doing. I could not write it for anything. It is a nonfiction assignment. I wrote a card deck on numerology, it's called Everyday Numerology, it's available now, it's really pretty. But I could not focus, I could not concentrate on doing, and this is spiritual work that I'm doing.

And I could not focus, I could not get it. Even with my medication, I couldn't get it until one day I woke up, took my medication, I felt it kick in. Like as soon as it kicked in, two weeks later, I was like "oh yeah, this is, I'm back now." This is again, I'm at baseline, at normal again. But from that experience I learned—I was like, I can't. I used to be able to do this kind of work, like just normal, 'cause I used to write about spirituality all the time.

But I learned this like, oh, this is how this affects my writing. This is how this affects me. This is how being in that state, that unmedicated state, I have to wait for that hyperfocus, 'cause I can't do anything else otherwise. I have to wait until my brain says, "you can have a couple drops of inspiration now". And I think that's so important 'cause you have to learn that, but unfortunately you only learn that through error.

 Yeah. And readers, listeners, if you're new to a medication, it can take two to six weeks before you start seeing those changes. And that whole time is an interruption of your process. So it takes years to find the right psychiatric medication. Cut yourself a break. If you're struggling, if you're struggling during that process, you've got good reason to struggle.

Kate, what were you saying?

 Especially first timers, they think that, oh, my doctor knows everything. First mistake. And they are going to prescribe the absolute right thing and I'm gonna be fine. No. Like, even getting medicated is this long sort of train of, is this working well? It's working well, but I can't do the things I need to do, so we need to do something else. And because it's like a 90 day cycle of getting on and off, this is going to consume your life for four to six months until you really find a thing that's gonna work for you. And yeah, there are a lot of things that are going to flow down the river in that time.

 Yeah. This is part of the reason why disabled writers and neurodiverse writers often take longer to progress in our careers, because we have all these interruptions and they might involve big process changes, and that involves reinventing the wheel for yourself sometimes. And it's frustrating, it's demoralizing. You have to keep on top of the positive thinking, because you can think "I've lost my gift". And it's like, no, you need the extended release.

And you know what, I do wanna say one more thing, and this is not directly about the medication, but it is about what you just said, Kristy, about how it takes us longer. Because if I hadn't had an agent who was gonna field all those phone calls and send the emails, that would've been a much different situation. Because there were times earlier in my career, not with fiction but with other stuff, because I did a lot of nonfiction work for a long time, where I would just be unable to function. And I didn't know at those times. I had no idea, because I'm late diagnosed, so I didn't know what was going on. I thought I was just lazy. Especially jobs that I would get where I didn't feel immediately qualified, because I had never done them before. But obviously if I got the job, I was qualified.

 This is writing work, writing jobs?

 This is all writing stuff, but I would get these gigs and I would just freeze up and I didn't know why, and it is because of the Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, which I suffer from. But also that causes—like I have trouble like sending an email. That was one of the things that when I got medication, finally I was talking to my doctor and they were like, how are you doing? And I was like, "today I sent an email in 15 minutes!" And they were like, "oh, that seems like a lot of time". And I was like, "it used to take me two hours".

 Yeah. That's a big deal.

 But like, I had a legitimate medical emergency around my medication where I had to be taken off, and if I at that time had not been able to just send a text to my agent and say, "hey, this is going on, please deal with this," I would have lost those gigs, because I would not have been able to communicate for myself that I was having this problem. And I know a lot of people are like, "why not? Like you're having a medical emergency, you should be able to just send an email." 'Cause I can't, I don't have a reason. If I had a reason, I would be able to solve the problem, but I don't.

And the reason I'm saying this, and I'm being so candid about this, is because I know I spent a lot of time earlier on in my career, beating myself up for opportunities that I lost. But the reason I lost those opportunities at that time was because in those moments I did not have the kind of support that I needed. Obviously getting an agent is not easy. That is not simple. But like, babes, if you got a friend who can send an email, have them come sit with you and get in your email and just respond to people, and send those emails that you are nervous about sending. They don't need to understand publishing, they don't need to understand writing. They just need to be able to sit down and go, "I'm so sorry, I'm having a medical emergency. Please gimme a two week extension," or whatever. I talk to people all day, every day who are just afraid to be like, I need an extension. And nine times outta ten they'll give it to you, because you're the talent.

 Yeah.

The whole thing runs because you showed up. But that, I think, is like an accommodation that people can give themselves: get a friend. They do not have to be a writing friend, they do not have to be a publishing friend. They just have to be able to type, to help you.

 I have a friend who did a bunch of that for me in Minneapolis, when I lived there. So a lot of the talking to publishing people and stuff, she would just do for me.

Yay. Yeah. I have a friend who sends emails for people because it's just too much, and you have your own baggage with those. You feel like a failure. Your buddy, however doesn't. They can just send an email.

 Donyae, for our readers and listeners who may not be familiar with Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, could you briefly explain what that is?

 Yeah, so it's just like a outsized sense of bad feelings around rejection or perceived rejection. So I used to think I just had imposter syndrome, and I bet a lot of people who are neurodiverse just think, I just have imposter syndrome. Because that's what you're told, that the reason why you are like sabotaging your own stuff, and why you are ruining your own day is because you feel that you're inferior. No, you have Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, okay?

So you are worried that this person is going to reject you and it's gonna cause you to feel very bad. And this is not in your head. It is in your head because that's where the feelings are coming from, it's your brain. But like you also, when you are rejected, right? And rejection here is just someone having a negative reaction to something. So you said something, and it didn't come out right and your friend's like, "Hey, that wasn't cool". That is rejection. That is a kind of rejection that's going to trigger this.

That's actually a really good example, 'cause this happens to me all the time. So you say something, it doesn't come out quite right, and your friend's like, I don't like that. It's not, I don't like it. And then you feel like, oh my God, you've ruined this friendship. This person now hates you, they're never gonna talk to you anymore. You are incredibly embarrassed, you're incredibly guilty, you feel like you wanna die. You are sick to your stomach. That's where I feel a lot of my negative feelings. It's in my stomach, getting shaky, your face is hot 'cause you're really embarrassed. It's just a whole physical manifestation. And all your friend said was, "I didn't really like that". Which is very reasonable and everything.

 Yeah. Yeah.

 And then you are now in a position where you think you've ruined everything. The person you're talking to has moved on because that was a little blip. It means nothing.

 Yeah.

 You have had an outsized reaction to a sense of rejection.

So there's debate about where this is coming from. I think it's a little bit of nature and nurture. I think that we are a little bit more prone to have these, 'cause we are—or neurodiverse people, ADHD, autism, PTSD, that whole thing—we do tend to be very sensitive as a base. I see this in my own kids who would never have had any real negative things ever said or done to them, and they're still crying 'cause they dropped a pencil and I'm like, "guys!"

 Yeah.

"That's you being a lot." So we're already sensitive as a base, but then I think we get a lot of negative feedback.

 Yeah.

 Especially when we're growing up. But that is what Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria is. So it will cause you, when you are doing writing stuff, to sometimes sabotage yourself and convince yourself that you can't do the thing. And so you do stuff like, don't answer your emails.

 Yeah.

Because you are afraid of having that interaction that you are already perceiving as being negative. And it might be, right? They could be like, "we're firing you". Which I mean is fine, but it's also not the end of the world.

 Yeah. It's also very typical of ADHD. So if you're listening and you have ADHD, this is something to look into and see, just consider if it fits your symptom set. For me it triggers irrational sudden suicide ideation. So if I make a mistake in a conversation in particular with someone that I really care about and I think I've upset them, I'm gonna go straight from that zero to catastrophe thing, and then I know I'm gonna have suicide ideation. So now that I know that's gonna happen, I can plan for it and be like, this is the script I'm gonna use for myself. This is the self-care I'm gonna plan.

Like when I go to a convention, I plan for a day off in the middle to have a meltdown, because I know I'm going to say something on a panel, somebody is gonna react in a way that I feel has ruined my reputation. I'll never write again, I'll never speak again, I should never be allowed in public. And I just need to have a meltdown the next day. And it doesn't matter if those feelings are logical, they're symptomatic, and I know they're gonna happen. So preparing for them is an accommodation.

Kate, do you ever have rejection sensitivity?

 Yes. I just think I hide it really well.

 Yeah.

 I have a hard time both honoring that and continuing to live in society. Especially living in Minnesota where my experience of being black in Minnesota was horrific, and I hated it. Every minute of it. And so there's a certain point of rejection sensitivity I don't get to have, or I'd spend my entire life just being insane about it. So yeah, there's a lot of that that I just internalize and probably is the source of a bunch of physical maladies that I'm not sure about.

We will find out in the next year as I am no longer working and doing the things that I wanna do and not having to deal with other people. We'll see whether things get better, but I don't know.

 Yeah. Shall we move from process to the deep questions about disability or science fiction or whatever we're gonna talk about. You guys ready?

 Yeah.

 I know Donyae, we talked briefly about writing neurodiverse characters when it's not explicitly on the page.

 Yeah.

 How do you approach your neurodiverse and disabled characters?

 So I don't think I ever like explicitly say. Like, I know I definitely didn't say it in Midnight Rooms, and I'm not gonna explicitly say anything in The Sunken, The Adored because it's the 1800s! Like, black girls can't get diagnosed with ADHD and autism now, right? In the year of our Lord 2025, right? We are still out here struggling. Like even for my own diagnosis, it was a process of multiple doctors, of facing humiliation and being told that I just need to get my stuff together.

So that's a process of: I'm writing historical gothic, I'm writing historical horror, and it would be wild to be like, "yeah, she's a little attention deficit". So you have to just write those characters. You just have to say like, "this is what is happening. This is how this person is perceiving the world," which creates, by its very nature, a very close point of view which I—now I'm gonna be a little bit craft-y.

That close point of view is both because you need to have that to understand that nature, but it is also a metaphor for living like that, where this, whoever you are, you're your whole world. People who have neurodivergence are often isolated. We often deal with that. Just as a reality, we often do not understand the points of views of others in so much of, not "I don't understand when someone's like, my feelings are hurt". That's not what I mean. What I mean is like, you see someone do something and you're like, "I don't know why they did that. I don't know why they didn't like that. I don't know why they had that response. That is not how I would've responded." And there's no one to explain that to you. You just gotta figure it out.

So in writing these characters I am taking that approach. I didn't realize I was taking that approach when I started, 'cause I wasn't diagnosed. I just thought this is how the world worked. But now I know. So it was interesting actually to get into the editorial process in that, because now I've got people reading my work and they are redlining. And I remember I got an edit back that was like, "this is not how people act". Like it was that comment. And I was like, "I would have done that. That is how I would've acted if faced with this problem". Not saying that this particular character is doing all the things that I would have done with my life, right? She is not me. We make lots of different choices. I made all of her choices actually because I created her.

It was that moment that I was like, "oh, I'm gonna have to like address this directly with my editorial staff to be like, hey, actually you have to understand, this is what's going on."

 Yeah.

When you're not explicitly saying things like that, you are gonna get—I don't read my Goodreads reviews, but I know these things exist—you are gonna get people who are like, "I don't know why this person did this. I would not do that. People don't act like that." And they see that as a flaw in the text as opposed to, this is how this person is acting, so maybe you have to accept that sometimes people act different than what you are aware of.

 There's a really ugly feeling to being told that your reality is not realistic.

 Yeah.

 Absolutely. Absolutely. It stayed in my memory because it was such a jarring moment. I know you like the book! You bought the book, you paid me money for it. So I know it's not like you saying that this work is wrong, right? So then there's that rejection sensitive piece, right? Because now I've been able to rationalize it. I know that this is not a statement about the work itself. This is a statement about the understanding of what is happening from the outside. And that kind of changed how I was processing some of these edits. And I had to sit down and be like, "hey, so have you heard of fawning?"

 There's what people find believable. That's like a whole rabbit hole we could go down for an entire podcast, 'cause I feel like a lot of our work gets rejected because the people reading it or the gatekeepers don't find it realistic because it's outside of their experience, and it doesn't feel believable to them.

And that works at a lot of different marginalizations. And when you're multiply marginalized, you're coming at this with a lot of different intersections of identity. It can feel more and more unbelievable to your typical editors, which I believe editors in general, and the agents in the industry, are still largely white women between I think ages 25 and 45. We're getting more diversity now, but still, if the majority of the readers are primed to understand one set of experiences, then you get rejected more often right off the bat.

And then you get feedback, right? Like workshop feedback and peer feedback.

 I don't go to workshops.

 But a lot of people, that's where they're getting discouraged and giving up because somebody told them somewhere that what happened to them wasn't realistic.

 It can't happen this way. What I will say in addition to that, so one: my editorial staff is actually all black women. Outlier! But I will say that I don't think in general any work should have to explicitly say, "this is the thing that is going on in this person's brain." I don't think that it is necessary. I don't care. I don't care if it's ADHD, autism, schizophrenia. It does not matter, unless the story is explicitly about dealing with or living with or handling those conditions. I don't think that it matters at all to tell the reader this is what is going on with this person's mind. Because you, the reader, are reading their experiences and you should be accepting their experiences for whatever it is.

So if this person is having hallucinations and that's part of the work, you just gotta accept that. It doesn't matter why it's happening, it doesn't matter if it's a hallucination from schizophrenia, it doesn't matter if it's just like temporary psychosis. It does not matter unless that story is about that thing. You know what I mean?

And when you come into a work and you're like, this person has ADHD, then you expect the work to be that, and that puts it in inside of a certain context. It's like, no, the context is the work, that is all the context you need. If you didn't need to know that explicitly, you didn't need to know it. If you needed to know it, the author would have put it in there. They didn't tell you for a reason. Accept it. I'm brutal that way.

 Yeah, no, I love that though because there are pieces that I have left information out on purpose and I get a lot of reviews just going "I needed to know that". I'm like, clearly you did not, 'cause you still alive and you read it.

 You read it and I told you what you needed to know to get through this.

 Yeah.

And I also think explicitly not saying, this is what is going on in this person, that is the experience, right? That is an authentic experience to living with neurodiversity or any mental health thing. Most of us go through life like that for a variety, especially if you are otherwise marginalized, right? If you are black or you are femme, if you are any of these other things, chances are you're walking through the life, living day in and day out with this as your worldview. This is your perspective, this is your understanding, and you have absolutely no idea why you are living like that, until you randomly see a TikTok video one day.

Yeah. And then, it can also be the opposite, where you are so incredibly medicalized that you have a million diagnostic labels and, you know, Turtles All the Way Down is a really good example of a book where I feel like—so John Green is the author— and it deals with OCD, and it deals with the type of OCD that I have. And because it's a lot of her [Aza, the protagonist] is in and out of like doctor's offices and she's dealing with the actual OCD, she does use a lot of diagnostic labels. But I still run into people with OCD who are like, "I didn't find that realistic". And I'm like, "there are different types of OCD. And the type that she has is the type I have. Doesn't sound like it's the type you have."

There's a TV show where a group of autistic young adults are living together and having experiences. And there's a lot of people in the commentary who are autistic saying that this is not a realistic portrayal of autism, because those are differently autistic people. So some of the pushback we get is from within our own communities.

 Yeah.

 Yep. Yep.

I have one question that comes from the internet. Because I went and looked through some reviews of Midnight Rooms—

 Okay.

And this question kept coming up. So now I'm gonna ask you: is there gonna be a sequel?

People were asking that? I didn't know people were asking that!

 They are now.

 Okay, hold on. Wait a second. I need a moment to process this because I had no idea. I thought what you were gonna ask me was what happened at the end? Was he lying?

Don't ruin it. I'm not, I haven't finished yet!

 There was some talk about that. Like, "the ending left me wanting more, so where's the sequel?" And I was like, okay.

 I didn't know people were asking that. My publisher didn't say anything. Let's give people what they want.

 Give them what they want, yes!

Is there gonna be a sequel... So I would say this: I'm not going to say never. I am going to say that you get some more information about the universe that this takes place in, in The Sunken, The Adored. Another book that happens in the same universe. It does not involve the same characters, but if you have read Midnight Rooms, there will be things that come up that you're like (gasp!)

 When is that coming out?

 That is currently slated, I believe, for the summer of 2026. So probably July 2026, is probably when that would drop.

 Okay. All right. So readers, you can definitely check that out. The Sunken, the Adored, when that comes out. The original book is Midnight Rooms. Midnight Rooms. This is my marketing. The more often you repeat the word, the more— Donyae Coles, Midnight Rooms.

I did have another question for you about horror. Is it all right if I ask you a scary question?

 Yeah, go ahead, please.

 Do you, as a horror writer, feel that there are unique ways to get at disability and at the lived experiences of disabled people, through horror? Like, what tools does horror give you, if any?

 I think there are. So, I say this with the caveat that I don't think the genre has been kind to disability in a lot of ways. I think that it has taken a very probably stereotypical approach to disability, because the way that it usually is handled is the horror is the disability.

 Yeah.

"This is a metaphor for losing your leg", you know what I mean?

 Exactly. Yeah.

Or the other kind of way I've seen it done is that like, "oh, this person isn't susceptible to whatever is happening, because they're on antipsychotics." Yay, it's a superpower now (sarcasm). And I also don't think that is necessarily the best way to go about this. But I do think that horror itself gives a way for people to kind of, not necessarily grapple, but really dive into the process of examining disability and its impact on the lives of the people who are living with it, right?

So I have ADHD, and my disability is in my brain, right? It is in my head. It is in the way I perceive the world, it's is in the way I move through the world, it is in the way I operate, the choices I make, how I interact with other people, right? And I think that it can be examined in those ways. Like, horror really provides a really beautiful and unique way to explain those experiences.

Because let's be real, when you are living with a disability, it's not all sunshine and roses. Like, it's not the end of the world, you keep on living, right? That's the living part of living with a disability. But there's stuff you struggle with. There's stuff you have a hard time with. And I think horror can be used to examine those spaces and bring them to new light. Especially if you do not have a primitive view of what horror is, right?

So a lot of people are like, "horror is just the scary stuff". It's the stuff that's scary and it's bloody and it's gory, and like sure it is, but there's also the process of transformation. You can also really dive into understanding beliefs, and understanding your place in the world, and how you move through the world. And coming to terms with big feeling concepts like grief or trauma, those are big ones.But even like joy and ecstasy.

The story I just had published in Nightmare, the name escapes me, but this is like the last one I had published in there. Go find it. But that one's about like ecstasy and release, like you can discuss these really big feelings in horror and not in a sense of "and now everyone lived happily", but through the construction of the form, right? That's what I like. I'm a body horror girlie.

But I do think that this genre has a unique and beautiful way that you can really explore disability and that effect on the self, and that effect on the self through society and reverse, in a way that is non reductive, in a way that is non stereotypical. But I also think that those stories in a lot of cases must be—I don't like to use the term but I can't think of a better one—but like 'own stories', right? You have to be the person writing it. You cannot just be a casual observer, because your observation is always going to be tainted by the grief it caused you.

 Yeah. There's a big difference between a story where it's somebody else's madness, and it's interesting to you as a concept, so I'm gonna write a horror story, as opposed to your processing your own experiences. Oh, there's a lot of people who write through bad dreams and that turns into a story, who write through PTSD or through hallucinations, and then pull out of that. Horror stories that they're telling. And that's very different than using them as the monster when that's not your lived experience. Is that kind of where you're going?

Yes, 'cause you're making disability the monster, when it's not your lived experience, nine times outta ten, you're gonna be like, the scary thing is surprise disability or racism, right?

 Yeah.

 And actually the new super ability right now is queer. I'm seeing a lot of stories come through the transom that are "I clearly wrote this as a heterosexual pair of people doing stuff, and I'm just gonna change the gender of one of them because it doesn't really matter". And I'm like, uhuh.

 But it matters.

 It does matter.

 It does. It matters a lot.

 Well, Kate, did you have another deep question before we wrap up?

I think that possibly the story you were talking about was The Ascension of Magdalene?

 Yes. Thank you.

 Okay.

 I dunno why, I love that story. I have no idea why my mind just blinked probably.

 It happens. But I did this wonderful piece of artwork for you.

 Oh. I can see your background.

 Lemme turn off my background.

 Yeah. If you turn off your background we should be able to see it.

 Oh, now you can see the cat in the background.

 There's a kitty.

 Yes.

 Alright, let's see this masterpiece. Midnight Rooms.

 Yeah.

 Kate is holding up a notebook with the new cover art for the new edition of Midnight Rooms. It shows a door opening, but it's also, it could be a book.

 Yeah, it could be all sorts of things. I don't know. I'm not an artist.

That's really funny because there are doors in the book when you read it, but one of the cut scenes that the editor was like, "no"... I wrote this piece—and I think about this all the time, so it's like I should have fought for that more—but I wrote this part where I was explaining that the way that she thinks is like all of these things that's happened, all these experiences, they go behind these doors in her mind and she shuts them, and then she stops thinking about them. Like, her parents are behind one door who have passed, the treatment of her aunt and uncles behind another door of these tea parties, and she shuts them until she needs them again.

 The idea that this character has stuff behind doors that when the door is shut, she can't remember, that's so ADHD. Like the doom piles, like the whole thing where if you don't physically see something, you lack the object permanence to remember it exists.

 Yes.

 That's really convenient for a horror story, because you get jump scared more often by your own stuff.

 Then she's in this terrible situation and people are telling her, "no, the thing that you think happened isn't what happened. You're wrong. You are mistaken." And then like, how does she know? How can she trust herself when she doesn't remember anything? Because her memory's bad.

 Yeah. Yeah. And then it becomes a therapeutic technique too, where eventually you're working through stuff and you're learning to control that. My therapist is like, "imagine a book and you've shut that chapter. You're not there anymore. That is a chapter in the past." But I'm like, "that's great. I wish that was something I could do right now." I'm not there yet, but in fiction, right? This is the way we process this too.

 Yep. Writing your fiction is, it's literally gone. It's literally the last chapter.

 It's the therapy method that we do because we couldn't have medical care. We became writers.

 Pretty much. But I'll do the one thing that will help you a little with serotonin. I generally don't read horror, but in the prep for this interview I read Sometimes Boys Don't Know. Oh my God, that is creepy AF, that's great.

 Yeah.

 Yeah. I really liked it.

 Thank you. Love that little story. I think it's so fun. I think the thing that throws people off about it is because it's played straight. It's played a hundred percent straight. That is a girl who's absolutely in love, absolutely. Hundred percent.

 Readers, if horror doesn't really do it for you, I would recommend you take a look at the broad diversity of horror that's available, because there are so many sub genres and it is likely there is one out there that will help you with your serotonin hit. People have different needs, and it is a broad genre, but an excellent example is Midnight Rooms by Donyae Coles. Midnight Rooms, which you can find at your local bookseller or online at a bookseller of your choice.

 And the audiobook exists.

 Yes. It is available in ebook, audiobook, and physical book. The paperback is coming out this summer.

 Excellent.

 It is available anywhere fine books are sold, or even not so fine books. So all of the websites, your local indie team get it. Get it from your library, I don't care. Yeah, as long as you get it.

 If you are wanting to support an author's work and you cannot afford to buy the book right now, one great way to support them is to call your library and ask them to stock that book, because then they will order it in and that helps the author build fans in that area.

Also your school library, your kids' school library, if you call and you ask them to stock this book—

Not this one. They'll not stock this. Okay. But I do have a YA story, it's in All These Sunken Souls, which is a black YA anthology that came out in 2022, I think. Or maybe 2023. Anyway, it's not important. It's called All These Sunken Souls and that one you can request your children's school library carry.

 Excellent. All right, we should wrap up. Thank you for joining us. This was an excellent discussion. It was delightful having you.

 Thank you so much. I loved being here. This was an excellent discussion. I had such a great time.

 Yay.

 Thank you again for Writing While Disabled, everyone. Hopefully we'll see you online, please join us with the hashtag Writing While Disabled, or hashtag Strange Horizons.

And you can ask us questions, which we may or may not reply to, but we'll enjoy seeing. Thank you.