I'm sitting in my writing chair, where I'm meant to be working on a cozy fantasy/mystery smashup. Outside, freezing rain is falling from the sky and coating the trees in a sheath of ice. The branches droop with the brittle weight. All is gray and white, poised to snap and shatter to the ground. I took a picture just now, and the reflection of my light superimposed itself on the scene. A lamp post in the snowy woods. And I want so badly for Mr. Tumnus to appear, with his bright scarf and wrapped parcels. Heralding magic in the world, and the end of tyranny.

Outside my little yard, ICE agents are now kidnapping people in Western Wisconsin. The United States has declared war on international law, and the world is burning up (or flooding, apparently—choose your own adventure.) I'm supposed to be writing fiction, but I just can't see the use.

Am I good enough? Does any of this matter? Is writing fiction while the world self-immolates just privilege?

I don't have any answers, only questions.

Questions and three waits.

The Wait for Validation

My first epic fantasy novel is seeking an agent.

I started my publishing career as a children's book illustrator and author. I had some successes: an agent, awards, ten trade books on the shelves. But they're disappearing one by one from print, and weirdly, this makes the waiting more difficult now.

I struggle with an entitled delusion that publication should be mine for the taking at this point in my career. I should have an agent, multiple books under submission, phone ringing with speaking engagements. Instead, I'm back in the query trenches, surrounded by fresh-faced hopefuls. Unlike them, I am not buoyed by that long-ago faith that seeing my books in print would somehow solve everything. That was powerful jet fuel for creative endeavor.

I know better now.

I am waiting to find out if Flight of the Sunsparrow is good enough, and wondering if I am too old to break into adult fantasy.

The Wait for the Work

I'm waiting to see if anything comes of The Confluence, the cozy fantasy/mystery smashup in rough draft. Is this a genre I can write? Is this a genre I can sustain?

At least with Flight of the Sunsparrow, I had the epic battle of good versus evil to act as a voodoo doll I could stick pins in. With cozy fantasy, the contrast between the Eau Claire I am writing and the Eau Claire of 2026—where ICE agents are kidnapping brown people off the street—feels obscene.

Or necessary.

I don't know. Both versions are true, actually.

So most days, I plug along on this project out of sheer obstinance, because creative discipline is what I do. But I won't know if anything will come of it until…something comes of it.

Or doesn't.

The Wait for the World

And, lastly, I am waiting, like all of us, to know if we will survive this current timeline. Will evil win, turning us all into fodder for the misogynist, racist corporate hunger beasts? Will our current political diaper fire burn itself out and become the compost for a better, greener, post-colonial and equitable society? Will the trees and the mycelium release a sudden burst of pheromones that turn us into docile bonobos, wearing togas and discussing philosophy while munching on vegan wafers?

I don't know. I am waiting for the next chapter.

I do more than wait: I march, and call my representatives, and wave signs and scream, and donate. But I can't do that all the time. My body and my psyche can't take it. I need to compartmentalize moments of terror and action so that I can spend other hours creating.

But today it isn't working. The sewage has backed up in my creative bathtub.

I don't know if Flight of the Sunsparrow will find an agent. I don't know if The Confluence will ever be anything more than a very long distraction. I don't know if writing cozy fantasy during the conflagration is an act of hope or just privilege.

But I do know that the very audacity of creation is what we are fighting for. The right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" that is currently under the boot. So, while I am paying attention, and while I am taking action, I need to spend time creating as well, or what is the damn point?

Right, Mr. Tumnus? Right?

You creators out there, especially those of you working on fantasy or whimsy—how do you handle the cognitive dissonance between your creative life and the world we now inhabit?