I’ve been going through a shitty mental health period and need something positive in my life. So here are some of the reasons I love about Kingsley, my weird ass fantasy noir about the angry queer anthro crocodiles rebelling and giving middle fingers to colonial asshats.

1. Honestly, I love the protagonist, Kingsley 😅 he’s a little shit but he’s my little shit. He’s paranoid, he’s over dramatic, he’s sarcastic, he’s treacherous, he tortures/murders people, he friends w/ a Demon, he’s manipulative, & he’s scared. All his life he’s been afraid.
2. I love that the story is told through different formats & timelines. It is told through memoirs, letters, journals, and articles. The timeline is the past and the future so you can see how the past affects our concept of the future and the future affects our concept of the past.
3. I love that the narrators are unreliable and the narrative is at war with itself. That the reader has to decide who they want to trust without really knowing how much truth they’re actually getting.
4. I love that Kingsley, who is sex repressed/awkward, is dating Oisin maybe the most horny character I’ve ever written. And that their relationship is a disastrous mixture of miscommunication, codependency, and all consuming need for stability and control.
5. I love that Kingsley’s worst actions come out of a very human need to have stability, peace, and quiet. That no matter what he does he can’t seem to escape the worst aspects of his life, so why try? That he is open about burning the world down as long as he and his are safe.
6. I love that majority of my characters are queer anthro crocodiles and that in the entire world, humans are the minority. I also love how expansive and diverse (in the human sense and the different non-human beings sense) the world is.
7. I love the catharsis of working through different traumas and letting characters being self-destructive, messy beings that still deserve love and understanding.
8. I love the Alex, the other MC, is an ace nonbinary mess of a journalist who is on the edge ready to jump and their initial solution is to embrace self-harm because that’s less scary then relying on others.
9. I love that Alex’s wife claims to hear the gods and see the future and Alex, a person of science and reason, accepts it because that’s how their wife understands and copes with her abilities and that’s all that matters.
10. I love that Alex and Christine’s relationship allows me to explore how believing that a relationship is only normal and functional if the couple have children is actually harmful.
11. I love that Devin, one of the SCs, is a rake with a heart of gold and he’s so desperate to do the right thing, even when the right thing seems impossible and when he has to choose between his conscience and the cause he chooses his conscience.
12. I love that Devin, the screw up who everyone wrote off as a joke, becomes an important character despite himself
13. As someone who was obsessed with the Nuremberg trials as a teen, I love I get to explore the many complications are international law and what does international accountability look like
14. I love that I pulled in so many noir references and made them my own like the gender nonconforming fatale, the inherit corruption of law and order and government, and the lone journalist who is desperate to find a truth that may not even exist.
15. I love all the Les Miserables references I peppered throughout the novel.
16. I fucking adore Oisin who develops more and more with each draft. He is a sex worker, burlesque dancer, club owner, and the most powerful politician in the country. He is codependent and insecure but also has a will of iron and *will* break you before you ever come close to breaking him.
17. I love Kerry, the aro-ace nonbinary transmasc self-insert who is a grumpy pain in the ass but he’s also a professional and has no time for martyrs or conceited jackasses. He is holding the movement together and desperately fighting for a future where martyrs are no longer needed.
18. I love that I got to work in Eric and his family, including his dog, Winston. They’re some of my oldest characters and mean the world to me.
19. I love how complicated and corrupt the politics of this book is. And how big the world is. As an international relations nerd, it’s nice to put my masters to good use. I’m sure my professors are proud haha. 😅
20. I love that the SC, Siegfried, is based on the idea that Enjorlas from Les Miserables could be beautiful and terrible (they’re also both ace in my head so another cool connection they have haha)
21. I love my lesbian, anthro crocodile sex worker turned rebel leader turn union leader, Nora Connolly and all their intense awkwardness and their clumsy expressions of a love they didn’t think they were ever allowed to feel and are not sure they want.