Ugh. Haunted as I am by the details coming to light on Gaiman and how much they remind me of my own experience with predators, I need to think about something GOOD.

So this feels like a great day to remind you that some authors are NOT, in fact, predatory and evil! ✨ Some are even actually like…the total opposite of that!

Some of them write incredibly well-rounded, diverse, multiethnic, complex characters of all shapes, sizes, genders, presentations, orientations, levels of disability, and walks of life.

Some of them might have had enough of kind and compassionate people being treated like prey, and partially use their books as vessels to tell stories of being faced with predatory people and how to push back against and undermine those people, even when you’re small or poor or disabled or afraid. Ways that work.

Some of them are so wonderfully, aggressively anti-predatory that if you read their books, you will just happen to learn multiple actual self defense tips, often designed to work against people bigger and stronger than you (many of which kept me alive in high school) along with descriptions of small, simple, safe ways to get stronger both mentally and physically. (As the internet becomes a more misinformation-flooded place and less of an easily helpful resource, the background knowledge I have from these books has come up often.)

Some of them might even meet you at writer camp and treat you like a person, even though you’re just a weird awkward kid with no social skills, and then might help you get into college, and then when you’re having strokes and your life is falling apart 15 years later, they might regularly write back and forth with you about really personal stuff and help keep you alive to fight another day.
(…that one might be semi specific to me, but I know I’m not the only one she’s helped in parallel ways that closely. 💖)

So, yeah, if you’d like to get obsessed with a prolific fantasy author who’s as good a human being as she is a storyteller, who I have vetted as hard as I can vet somebody, I can recommend no author in the world higher than Tamora Pierce.

So, if you’re as angry and sad and disgusted by Neil Gaiman today as I am, do yourself a favor and go get yourself a lil soul cleanse—either buy from your favorite bookseller or go to your local library and get your hands on a copy of the first book in either of her 2 universes! 🌟

⚔️ If you’re a fan of swords and sorcery, go grab “Alanna: the First Adventure”. (1st Tortall Universe book.)
🌀 If more elemental magic and found family is the vibe for you (and, shhh, don’t tell anyone, but it is for me), get yourself a copy of “Sandry’s Book.” (1st Circle Universe book.)

You may get some snooty people’s noses turning up for these books being YA, or “for girls” (they’re not, they’re for everyone,) but let me assure you—the writing, characters, and plots are more beautifully intricate and adult than anything, say, I dunno…picking another Deeply Sketchy Author Man who gets too much credit while clearly outing himself as sketchy in his work like Gaiman did…hmmm…George RR Martin!…has ever managed, they just also actually make internal world-building sense and she bothers to finish them. 🤦🏻‍♀️😂

Seriously, y’all, Tammy’s books are the best, and the positive lessons they teach last for life. 💖