Meet Joy Demorra | Author, Editor and Disability Advocate

We had the good fortune of connecting with Joy Demorra and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Joy, have there been any changes in how you think about work-life balance?
This is honestly something so important to me, and I’m so glad I get to talk about it! I’m one of nature’s born workaholics. I suspect it’s a combination of ADHD and growing up in Scotland to working-class parents who instilled in me a work ethic that can best be described as “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” And it’s honestly one of the worst things about me!

As a disability advocate, writer and editor, finding a healthy work-life balance has become fundamental to my approach to work—both in terms of how I nurture my own creative process, and that of the people I work with too.

Through my mid to late twenties, I burned myself out in several high-stress jobs, including a publishing house that demanded a near-constant turnover of work. It wasn’t unusual for me to hand in a hundred-thousand-word manuscript at 3 pm on a Friday, only to have my senior editor email me back at 3:07 pm with a sixty-thousand-w0rd manuscript due the following Tuesday. Needless to say, that level of work output was not sustainable, and the stress eventually caught up with me. It was so bad that when I got laid off during the 2013 Financial Crisis along with the rest of my team, it almost came as a relief.

I don’t know about anyone reading this, but if being laid off during a financial crisis comes as a relief, I think that speaks volumes about the toxicity of your work environment.

Despite changing jobs and entire career paths several time since then, it was an unfortunate holding pattern I couldn’t seem to shake. I’d get a job, work as hard as I could, get burned out, wash, rinse, repeat. I genuinely thought the problem was me. And it was! Just not in the way I thought. It wasn’t until I became disabled in my early thirties (a combination of over exhaustion and a genetic disability that had been lurking in my DNA like a time bomb waiting to go off) that I realized just how unsustainable the output being demanded of me was, and just how bad it was for my health.

There is no doubt in my mind, that while I couldn’t have avoided my genetic disability, had I not worked so hard and kept constantly pushing my boundaries, that I certainly could have mitigated the severity of the symptoms I was experiencing.

My life pivoted on a dime during those initial days of rehabilitation. Suddenly what I wanted to do and what I *could* do were very different things, and I had to find a way to reconcile myself with that. In doing so, I realized all along that I’d been working too hard, and that I didn’t need to always be pushing myself to the limit for my efforts to matter. They always had. They still do.

I still struggle with this from time to time. Old habits die hard, and there will always be a part of me looking for the next project or the next milestone to accomplish. But for the sake of my physical and mental well-being, I’m not trying to keep up with anyone else anymore. It might take me a while longer to get where I’m going than other people, but I’ll get there when I get there. I’m just taking the scenic route 🙂

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I’ve been writing my whole life for as long as I can remember, so you’d think I’d have wanted to be an author growing up. Truthfully, I always thought I’d be a high school English teacher. It wasn’t until I was about to graduate that I realized what a horrible mistake that would be and decided to jump around for a bit and see where I landed. As luck would have it, a friend who worked in publishing was in need of an assistant editor, so she hired me, and that was my start in the industry. Unfortunately, not long after that, I got sick—too sick to work properly—and I started writing online as an outlet, mostly on Tumblr.

And that’s how ‘Hunger Pangs: True Love Bites’ was born.

I like to joke that my Tumblr audience tricked me into becoming a professional author, but truthfully, that’s not far off from the truth. What started as little joke posts about vampires and werewolves kissing soon spawned into an entire sprawling universe with plot and character development and a pre-order count on Amazon to make your eyes water. (Amazon actually froze my account because they thought I was bot-farming clicks to game the algorithm. Needless to say, that was a fun phone call.)

Hunger Pangs, or ‘Phangs’ as Tumblr nicknamed it, is set in a pseudo-regency meets fake-Victorian Gaslamp Fantasy world, complete with gothic castles, enchanted forests, and just a smidge of industrial coal dust. It’s been described by my readers as “like reading the queer, goth love child of Terry Pratchett meets Jane Austen,” and nothing else I write will ever surpass that.

It’s the first book in a queer, polyamorous gaslamp fantasy romance series featuring a deaf, disabled werewolf named Nathan, a neurodivergent, mad scientist vampire called Vlad, and the Lady Ursula, an all-powerful enchantress on a quest to save the world from imminent disaster.

I’m a slow-burn fanatic at heart, so the first novel primarily focuses on the budding romance between Vlad and Nathan, with Ursula forming her own relationship with both of them in the next book (Hunger Pangs: Pride and Folly).

If I say so myself, it’s a fun little romp that likes to flip tropes and character archetypes on their heads, but it also doesn’t shy away from addressing serious topics. When I was trying to sell the book to publishers, Nathan’s disability arc was often a point of contention. Publishers were worried that Nathan’s lack of a “cure”—especially in a magical world—would turn readers off. They even tried to argue that I should make Nathan hate himself and turn the story into a love triangle between the three characters to build more tension because it’s what mainstream readers would expect.

So, I decided, to heck with what mainstream readers expect, I’ll do it my way and self-publish it. And I’m so glad I did! Difficult as the process was, there’s not a single thing I’d change about the disability representation in Hunger Pangs—not least of all the reaction it garnered from readers.

There isn’t a single day where I wake up without an email from someone telling me they felt comforted by the way Nathan’s arc of recovery and acceptance was handled or that Vlad’s obvious neurodivergency and strong sense of social justice made them feel seen. Even Ursula, who only gets a few scenes to herself, provoked a strong reaction from readers who connected with her loneliness and sadness and felt less alone because of it.

And that matters. It matters that people feel accepted and seen in the things that they read, especially in fantasy worlds where supposedly anything goes from conjuring fireballs to dragons, but publishers are still scared to try and sell a narrative about disabled characters that aren’t tragic or self-loathing. It was so important to me that when I was designing the book covers with my friend and illustrator, Rye Hickman, I specifically asked them to make Nathan’s hearing aids as visible on all the cover art as possible. It’s a detail that I love, and one I know that would have been glossed over or removed if I hadn’t stuck to my guns and told the story the way I wanted to tell it.

If most Romance is the fantasy of escapism, then Hunger Pangs is the fantasy of acceptance, and I am so, so proud of it. And I really can’t wait to get the next book out into the world 🙂

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
By happy coincidence, I did precisely this when my childhood best friends visited me from Scotland recently. Given that I now reside in Minnesota, the time of year will significantly affect these plans, but assuming you are a sane person who isn’t visiting during the winter (unlike me, who frequently came here during the dead of winter when my partner and I were long distance dating), one place I cannot recommend highly enough is Como Park here in the Twin Cities. It is my happy place, and I adore wandering through the hothouses all year round. It reminds me of being home in Glasgow when I would walk through the Botanical Gardens on my lunch break to squeeze in a bit more greenery before returning to work.

Being a history nerd, I’m also a huge fan of the James J. Hill House, run by the Minnesota Historical Society. It’s always fun to visit during exhibitions and events, and they host fantastic walking tours during the summer. If you can, keep an eye out for any events during your stay. One time, I got to see a production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet that used the house as a backdrop as the actors led us through the house from scene to scene. There was something delightfully chilling about watching Ophelia drown in a Victorian clawfoot bathtub in the basement while her voice echoed off the marble walls. 10/10 absolute nightmare fuel would recommend. I’m still mad I missed their production of Macbeth.

If science is more your speed, I enjoy checking out the exhibits at the Science Museum of Minnesota. I’d cheerfully spend an entire day in the Omnitheater watching everything from the secret life of pandas to a documentary about NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Also, keep an eye out for their upcoming exhibits. The Sherlock Holmes one is always fun whenever it pops up.

Food-wise, I will have to insist you visit me in late August so I can subject you to the Minnesota State Fair. Being Scottish, I am no stranger to the delights of deep-fried foods that have no business being deep-fried, but the Minnesota State Fair takes the concept to a whole other level. I wasn’t even aware you could deep fry ice cream until I first visited the fair. I’m still not sure how I feel about it, but I firmly believe it is something everyone should experience at least once.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
If this is the closest I’ll get to the Oscars I’d like to take the opportunity to thank my parents, who taught me to read by pinning words all around the house and, therefore, inadvertently taught me that there are stories everywhere waiting to be told.

To my editors, Rose and Lark at RoseLark Publishing (and to all the rest of the team!), thank you for getting through the arduous process of getting my first novel out the door during the height of the pandemic. Here’s hoping the next one is more chill.

To my blog followers who tricked me into becoming a professional author by being unrelentingly enthusiastic about my writing and who stuck with me through thick and thin, thank you for your kindness and unwavering support over the years.

And to my partner, who realized the worth of my words long before I did and who took the “in sickness and in health” part of his vows to ride or die levels of support: nothing I do would be possible without you. Thank you for taking all things in stride. I’m sure it’s not effortless, but you sure make it look that way.

Also, to anyone out there who is a chronically burned-out overachiever who needs a kick in the pants when it comes to the importance of self-care, read “Burnout: The Secret To Unlocking the Stress Cycle” by Emily and Amelia Nagoski. The quote about needing to spend 42% of our lives resting and playing to maintain adequate levels of healthful rest before our brains fry themselves lives rent-free in my head and helps me keep the workaholic tendency gremlins at bay. Most of the time.

Website: www.joydemorra.com

Instagram: @joydemorra

Twitter: @joydemorra

Other: Tumblr: @joydemorra

Image Credits
Model: Joy Demorra Photographer: Joy Demorra